ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► - Oh, the only question is,

00:00:01 ◼   ► are we gonna make Brent Simmons angry with the comma splice,

00:00:04 ◼   ► and here I am on my battery.

00:00:06 ◼   ► You can make it a semicolon, you can make it a period,

00:00:08 ◼   ► if you leave it as a comma, it's a comma splice,

00:00:10 ◼   ► but I feel like it's an informal,

00:00:11 ◼   ► and since it is a someone speaking,

00:00:14 ◼   ► you could consider it someone speaking,

00:00:15 ◼   ► sometimes people speak in things that are not sentences.

00:00:18 ◼   ► - I definitely would not do a semicolon,

00:00:20 ◼   ► 'cause that just is wrong.

00:00:21 ◼   ► I mean, I know it's grammatically right,

00:00:23 ◼   ► but I just hate them.

00:00:24 ◼   ► - You just hate, like on principle, like ever?

00:00:27 ◼   ► - Not never, but it takes a lot

00:00:29 ◼   ► for me to use a semicolon.

00:00:30 ◼   ► - What does it take?

00:00:31 ◼   ► - It needs to be really, really worth it.

00:00:32 ◼   ► - What does it take?

00:00:33 ◼   ► - It has to really be the right thing to use there

00:00:36 ◼   ► and there has to be no good alternatives.

00:00:38 ◼   ► That's why I really rarely use semicolons

00:00:42 ◼   ► 'cause I don't like them.

00:00:43 ◼   ► - So then it'd be period, here I am, period.

00:00:45 ◼   ► But anyway, I just leave it as a comma.

00:00:47 ◼   ► - Well, but it has to be two periods.

00:00:48 ◼   ► It has to be here I am, period, I'm a battery, period.

00:00:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, but we don't put periods in titles, so yeah.

00:00:52 ◼   ► So we'll just leave the comma in there.

00:00:53 ◼   ► We'll just dare Brent to yell at us about it.

00:00:55 ◼   ► Go ahead, come and get us.

00:00:58 ◼   ► The entire internet wrote in to tell us that there is already a lightning to headphone

00:01:03 ◼   ► jack adapter, which is not at all useful if you're anywhere other than your desk.

00:01:08 ◼   ► But in the defense of the entire internet, we were talking mostly about using this sort

00:01:14 ◼   ► of adapter at work as you listen to podcasts or music all day long.

00:01:17 ◼   ► Apple sells a lightning to headphone jack adapter with pass-through lightning for charging.

00:01:23 ◼   ► It's the $40 lightning dock, which I believe came out recently, didn't it?

00:01:27 ◼   ► But that's got like a DAC in it and that's for like the digital, the headphones that

00:01:30 ◼   ► take digital audio over the lighting port.

00:01:32 ◼   ► Like that's not really relevant to what we were discussing, which was if they replaced

00:01:35 ◼   ► the headphone jack with the lightning port and still wanted to support regular plain

00:01:39 ◼   ► old analog headphones with an adapter that did not require, you know, any signal conversion

00:01:45 ◼   ► or anything.

00:01:46 ◼   ► It would just, you know, be a metal pass through to the audio pins of the headphone.

00:01:52 ◼   ► And that's not what the lighting dock does.

00:01:54 ◼   ► So how would you describe Lightning Dock instead then?

00:01:58 ◼   ► - It is basically a thing to let you both plug in

00:02:02 ◼   ► the current crop of Lightning-compatible headphones

00:02:07 ◼   ► and also a charter at the same time.

00:02:09 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:02:10 ◼   ► One way or another, this is not the sort of thing

00:02:12 ◼   ► that we would expect one to take running around with them

00:02:15 ◼   ► as they're trying to use it to adapt Lightning

00:02:18 ◼   ► to a regular headphone jack.

00:02:20 ◼   ► This would serve the purpose for desk use,

00:02:23 ◼   ► not for mobile use. And that's mostly what we were talking about last episode, but yes.

00:02:29 ◼   ► We wanted to publicly acknowledge on behalf of the entire internet who wrote into us that

00:02:33 ◼   ► we are aware that this exists. So Eric Michael's Ober had a little bit of

00:02:40 ◼   ► feedback with regard to why else you would want to use the Lightning port for audio.

00:02:45 ◼   ► He pointed out that noise-canceling headphones don't need their own battery or any other

00:02:50 ◼   ► their charging mechanism because they can just draw power right off the lightning port,

00:02:55 ◼   ► much like the Apple Pencil does.

00:02:56 ◼   ► Which you may or may not want. Like, do you really want your noise-canceling headphones

00:03:00 ◼   ► sucking power from your phone? Maybe. Maybe not.

00:03:02 ◼   ► Well, you know, we have all this extra battery power on the phones. Might as well use it

00:03:06 ◼   ► for other purposes.

00:03:07 ◼   ► So much is practically bursting out of the phone there so much battery power.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Well played, sir. We'll get there. All right. And then I have no idea who we're attributing

00:03:17 ◼   ► this to.

00:03:18 ◼   ► - MX, good old MX.

00:03:20 ◼   ► - Okay, and he or she said that USB type C

00:03:24 ◼   ► already supports analog audio.

00:03:25 ◼   ► Check out appendix A in the spec

00:03:27 ◼   ► and we will link to the spec in the show notes.

00:03:30 ◼   ► John, I believe you've bolded some passages here.

00:03:32 ◼   ► Would you like to share that with the group?

00:03:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, the spec by the way is a PDF.

00:03:35 ◼   ► Like we're linking to the page that has the PDF on it.

00:03:37 ◼   ► So you can just download the PDF and find this.

00:03:38 ◼   ► But in appendix A--

00:03:39 ◼   ► - Sounds fun.

00:03:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, you will find out that,

00:03:42 ◼   ► the reason this comes up is because last time we're like,

00:03:45 ◼   ► I said one of the advantages of lightning

00:03:46 ◼   ► is that if Apple wants to add support for plain old analog audio either by adding those

00:03:53 ◼   ► two weird side contacts that I seem to remember seeing somewhere and I still can't find, or

00:03:57 ◼   ► just by repurposing the pins because the whole deal with Lightning is you can use the different

00:03:59 ◼   ► pins for different purposes, it's not sort of hardwired so to speak to do a particular

00:04:05 ◼   ► thing, that Apple has the flexibility to do that.

00:04:07 ◼   ► They don't have to wait for the USB committee or whatever to agree but it turns out USB-C

00:04:11 ◼   ► already supports analog audio.

00:04:13 ◼   ► I should have figured that since it's an old standard.

00:04:17 ◼   ► If you have your USB-C connector in audio adapter accessory

00:04:22 ◼   ► mode, it just takes a certain number of pins in the USB

00:04:24 ◼   ► and uses them for the same exact signals that go over 3.5

00:04:27 ◼   ► million or headphone jack.

00:04:28 ◼   ► So that's already supported in USB-C.

00:04:30 ◼   ► And by the way, the other thing I found out

00:04:31 ◼   ► about USB-C relevant to our conversation last time

00:04:33 ◼   ► about whether Apple was all in on Lightning

00:04:35 ◼   ► or whether they were going to eventually switch to USB-C,

00:04:38 ◼   ► USB-C is bigger than Lightning.

00:04:40 ◼   ► This shows how many USB-C devices I have in my house.

00:04:42 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure I have zero, maybe I have one, I don't know about it somewhere, but

00:04:46 ◼   ► anyway I've never, I don't have an idea of what they're like, but looking it up online

00:04:49 ◼   ► afterwards USB-C is slightly bigger and that pretty much dooms Apple to ever switch to

00:04:54 ◼   ► it because they're going to be like, "well, lightning is smaller so why would we ever

00:04:59 ◼   ► switch to that thing?"

00:05:00 ◼   ► So I think we're in it for the long haul for lightning even though USB-C apparently already

00:05:05 ◼   ► supports analog auto and you could definitely make that passive connector thing for old

00:05:10 ◼   ► style headphones if you were using USB-C.

00:05:12 ◼   ► Excellent.

00:05:13 ◼   ► Speaking of USB, and in this case USB 3, we are now getting USB 3 speeds from the new

00:05:20 ◼   ► Lightning test SD card camera reader that came out just in the last couple of days as

00:05:26 ◼   ► we record.

00:05:27 ◼   ► And for the iPad Pro, you get USB 3 speeds on that.

00:05:31 ◼   ► And that's pretty exciting.

00:05:32 ◼   ► I've never actually used one of these.

00:05:33 ◼   ► Do you guys have one of them?

00:05:35 ◼   ► I have the USB one, which I use for like audio purposes, which is actually, it's like this

00:05:40 ◼   ► totally undocumented thing that it can do.

00:05:43 ◼   ► You can plug in a lot of USB audio interfaces to it

00:05:45 ◼   ► and have different sound inputs or outputs

00:05:47 ◼   ► for your iOS devices.

00:05:48 ◼   ► And that actually has worked on iPhones and iPads

00:05:50 ◼   ► basically forever.

00:05:52 ◼   ► But my father-in-law used the SD card one

00:05:56 ◼   ► for a little while on his iPad.

00:05:58 ◼   ► It was fine, it was okay.

00:06:00 ◼   ► - I think what interests me most about these USB3 speeds

00:06:03 ◼   ► in the iPad Pro is for people like me,

00:06:06 ◼   ► maybe I'm rare in this, who still hook up their iOS devices

00:06:09 ◼   ► to one of their big computers and do an encrypted local backup instead of just relying on the

00:06:14 ◼   ► iCloud backup, it takes so long to do it at USB 2.0 speeds.

00:06:18 ◼   ► So if I could get USB 3.0 speeds when doing a local backup to my computer through iTunes,

00:06:22 ◼   ► I would really appreciate that, even for my dinky 32 and 64 gig devices, let alone if

00:06:27 ◼   ► we got like a 128 gig iPad Pro.

00:06:29 ◼   ► So I'm assuming you have one, Marco.

00:06:31 ◼   ► I'm assuming if you were to hook it up to your Mac with the USB cable, it would still

00:06:35 ◼   ► be USB 2.0 speeds?

00:06:37 ◼   ► As far as I know, because I think all the existing Lightning to USB cables, I think

00:06:40 ◼   ► are all USB 2 cables.

00:06:42 ◼   ► So I don't think that's doable yet, but hopefully over time that'll be solved just in time for

00:06:48 ◼   ► people to stop ever syncing their things to their computers.

00:06:49 ◼   ► Well, I don't know if you want to ever stop, because as people who have ever restored from

00:06:54 ◼   ► iCloud can attest, it's such a super pain.

00:06:56 ◼   ► Oh yeah, I will still do it, and Tiff will still do it, but I think we are already in

00:07:01 ◼   ► the extreme minority there.

00:07:02 ◼   ► Anyway, that's the accessory they need to release.

00:07:04 ◼   ► forget about this whole, you know, like the whole exciting thing was like, "Wow, the

00:07:08 ◼   ► Lightning port supports USB 3.0 speeds, but only in the iPad Pro," and, you know, surely

00:07:11 ◼   ► that will trickle down and that'll be great. But I don't want an SD card reader. I want

00:07:15 ◼   ► a thing that plugs into my computer for it.

00:07:17 ◼   ► Steven: Yeah, for what it's worth, I actually put this on my Christmas list for this year.

00:07:21 ◼   ► I don't know if I would necessarily—you know, it's a great gift because it's the

00:07:25 ◼   ► sort of thing I wouldn't necessarily buy for myself, but hey, if somebody handed it

00:07:28 ◼   ► to me, that'd be pretty awesome. And the reason I want one is because there are probably

00:07:32 ◼   ► going to come times when I'm traveling with our Micro Four Thirds camera, I didn't decide

00:07:37 ◼   ► to bring a laptop with me and I only have my iPad.

00:07:40 ◼   ► And I could connect the camera to the iPad by way of Wi-Fi, but it's actually surprisingly

00:07:47 ◼   ► slow to do it that way.

00:07:49 ◼   ► And so I think it would be a lot easier to just pull the SD card out of the camera and

00:07:54 ◼   ► attach it to the iPad or phone for that matter, and suck some pictures off of there that way

00:07:59 ◼   ► in order to post on Instagram or maybe just send to friends or family or what have you.

00:08:04 ◼   ► So I'm curious to see if I end up getting this for Christmas, and if I do, I'll report

00:08:08 ◼   ► back.

00:08:09 ◼   ► But I agree with you, Marco, by and large, that it's not a lot of people that would want

00:08:12 ◼   ► this, but I kind of want one because I think it would be useful.

00:08:15 ◼   ► It's kind of a testament to the crappiness of wireless.

00:08:17 ◼   ► We talked about the last show about like, is Wi-Fi above the level of flakiness?

00:08:21 ◼   ► But how many people use Wi-Fi syncing to iTunes?

00:08:23 ◼   ► Maybe that's not, you can't blame Wi-Fi for that.

00:08:25 ◼   ► You can just blame iTunes because there's so much.

00:08:28 ◼   ► But even with cameras, so many cameras have Wi-Fi, or remember that stupid iFi thing,

00:08:33 ◼   ► like it was the SD card with Wi-Fi built in or whatever.

00:08:35 ◼   ► And then it's like desktop Linux, like the next, oh, this one, the new model we just

00:08:38 ◼   ► made is finally the good one, and it never is.

00:08:41 ◼   ► For the cameras, for the cameras that have built in Wi-Fi support, that's what you want.

00:08:45 ◼   ► You want that and you also want it to work.

00:08:47 ◼   ► But you want it until you try it.

00:08:49 ◼   ► Yeah, I know, but what's the problem?

00:08:52 ◼   ► Wi-Fi itself, technologically speaking, is an okay technology.

00:08:57 ◼   ► We all use wireless devices all around our house and they more or less maintain the connection

00:09:01 ◼   ► and we get reasonable speeds based on what we think the signal strength is and yet when

00:09:04 ◼   ► we have a super expensive camera 30 inches away from a super expensive iPad, the best

00:09:11 ◼   ► way we have to talk to them is to open up the camera in a little waterproof or water

00:09:15 ◼   ► resistant compartment, pull out this tiny little card, plug this little thing into the

00:09:18 ◼   ► lightning port, shove the little, it's just, you're right there guys, you both have radios,

00:09:22 ◼   ► you both, like what's the problem here?

00:09:24 ◼   ► Is it because camera manufacturers don't know how to do Wi-Fi stacks?

00:09:28 ◼   ► I don't know what the deal is, but it's sad.

00:09:30 ◼   ► - Well, they all have their own apps, basically.

00:09:32 ◼   ► It's like my camera has built in Wi-Fi, finally.

00:09:35 ◼   ► Like it took me years to finally get one that had that.

00:09:38 ◼   ► But in order to use it, I have to install Sony's dumb app on my phone, which works about

00:09:42 ◼   ► a third of the time.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And when you do finally get it to work, you kind of regret that you got it to work, because

00:09:48 ◼   ► it's just so mediocre and so slow.

00:09:51 ◼   ► It actually would have been faster to just take the car out of the camera and shove it

00:09:55 ◼   ► into this thing than it is to do the Wi-Fi thing.

00:09:58 ◼   ► Yeah, but that feels barbaric, though, taking things apart and putting them together.

00:10:02 ◼   ► I feel like I'm using a VCR, but it's faster.

00:10:06 ◼   ► I completely agree.

00:10:07 ◼   ► My Olympus, it isn't—the app is relatively reliable, but it is astonishingly slow to

00:10:16 ◼   ► transfer pictures between the camera and the phone or the iPad.

00:10:20 ◼   ► And it's very, very frustrating.

00:10:21 ◼   ► Now, the app is nice in that, for general things, like it'll let me geotag based on

00:10:26 ◼   ► what the phone is doing.

00:10:28 ◼   ► So it'll take a log of all the places I go and all the timestamps and whatnot, and then

00:10:32 ◼   ► it'll send those to the phone and then geotag all the pictures on the phone, or excuse me,

00:10:36 ◼   ► send those to the camera.

00:10:37 ◼   ► And it'll geotag all the pictures on the camera, which I really like on the occasions where

00:10:41 ◼   ► I'm not just staying put somewhere.

00:10:43 ◼   ► And it also lets you do like a remote viewfinder sort of thing.

00:10:46 ◼   ► So much like you can with the watch and the phone, it'll let you take pictures remotely,

00:10:51 ◼   ► which is really nice if you're too socially awkward to say to somebody, "Hey, can you

00:10:55 ◼   ► take our picture?"

00:10:57 ◼   ► But I cannot say enough how awfully slow it is to transfer pictures.

00:11:01 ◼   ► And because of that, I agree with you, Marco.

00:11:03 ◼   ► I just end up taking the damn card out of the camera and putting it in a computer.

00:11:07 ◼   ► All right.

00:11:09 ◼   ► And we have some good news this week.

00:11:11 ◼   ► Our long national nightmare is over.

00:11:14 ◼   ► We now have an Apple remote app for iOS that works with the new Apple TV

00:11:19 ◼   ► Which would be more exciting to me if I had a new Apple TV. Well, we don't have a my understanding

00:11:24 ◼   ► I haven't tested this but my understanding is it's not as if they released a new version of the remote app that works with

00:11:29 ◼   ► Apple TV. It's the opposite. They recent released a new version of the Apple TV OS that makes the existing remote app work with it

00:11:36 ◼   ► Is that correct based on your understanding or experimentation? Oh, I didn't try it. I thought that was correct

00:11:42 ◼   ► - Correct.

00:11:43 ◼   ► - I mean, I think they did eventually release

00:11:44 ◼   ► a new remote app as well,

00:11:46 ◼   ► but I think before they even released the new remote app,

00:11:48 ◼   ► what I read was that if you just updated the tvOS,

00:11:52 ◼   ► your remote app would work with it

00:11:54 ◼   ► even before they released the eventual remote app update.

00:11:57 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was the idea.

00:11:58 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's too late for all of us for the setup stuff.

00:12:00 ◼   ► And there's still promises of like the real remote app

00:12:03 ◼   ► that's gonna let you swipe around on your phone,

00:12:06 ◼   ► like the touchpad, and use the accelerometers,

00:12:08 ◼   ► and just basically be a full-fledged replacement

00:12:11 ◼   ► for the new Apple TV remote rather than just,

00:12:14 ◼   ► please, for the love of God, give us an onscreen keyboard

00:12:16 ◼   ► that we can type on with our fingers

00:12:17 ◼   ► instead of having to swipe back and forth

00:12:19 ◼   ► on the number line or the letter line

00:12:21 ◼   ► or whatever the hell we're calling that thing.

00:12:22 ◼   ► - So interestingly, for whatever it's worth,

00:12:25 ◼   ► we recently bought a PS4, meaning yesterday.

00:12:28 ◼   ► So I got a chance to try, you know,

00:12:31 ◼   ► what is a current, well, recent-ish effort

00:12:34 ◼   ► at a regular onscreen keyboard

00:12:35 ◼   ► by using Sony's little dumb thing?

00:12:36 ◼   ► Before I wrote that, you could just plug in a USB keyboard.

00:12:39 ◼   ► About halfway through the process, I realized that.

00:12:40 ◼   ► But for the first half of the process,

00:12:42 ◼   ► I was just using their little built-in thing.

00:12:44 ◼   ► And just using the built-in keyboard

00:12:46 ◼   ► with their controller and the D-pad

00:12:48 ◼   ► and a couple of buttons on the shoulder buttons

00:12:50 ◼   ► to do like, you know, done and delete and stuff.

00:12:53 ◼   ► My God, it's so much better.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Like, I was able to enter text so much faster

00:12:58 ◼   ► in this regular on-screen keyboard using a regular D-pad

00:13:03 ◼   ► that I had never used before than I still am today

00:13:07 ◼   ► on the new Apple TV that I've been using now

00:13:09 ◼   ► for like a month or something.

00:13:10 ◼   ► - Let me give you a pro tip.

00:13:12 ◼   ► Do not use the D-pad,

00:13:13 ◼   ► I can't believe you suffer through

00:13:15 ◼   ► like a barbarian using the D-pad to pick from the keyboard.

00:13:18 ◼   ► You get one finger or thumb on the touch pad

00:13:21 ◼   ► on the PS4 controller and one finger or thumb

00:13:23 ◼   ► on the X button to select.

00:13:25 ◼   ► - Wait, there's a touch pad?

00:13:25 ◼   ► - Way, way faster.

00:13:28 ◼   ► Oh my God, is it so much faster.

00:13:29 ◼   ► - Wait, is that the big gray rectangle in the middle?

00:13:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's the big thing in the middle of the controller.

00:13:34 ◼   ► - I had no idea that was a touch pad.

00:13:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, you'll find out in games that it is as well.

00:13:38 ◼   ► But anyway.

00:13:39 ◼   ► won't TIFF might. It is so much easier because like it's not a great

00:13:42 ◼   ► trackpad it's like the one on Casey's Dell like you know it's a crappy one but

00:13:46 ◼   ► it's so much better than going down down right right up up down down because you

00:13:49 ◼   ► could basically just go mousing around to a top tap tap tap it just feels so

00:13:53 ◼   ► much more freeing than being constrained by like the grid like you're in a Tron

00:13:56 ◼   ► game trying to play light cycles to get around the keyboard. Well honestly I mean

00:14:00 ◼   ► I think what made it so much faster for me it rather than the way the the Apple

00:14:04 ◼   ► TV one is done besides the fact that it had more than one row Apple but I think

00:14:08 ◼   ► What made it so much faster is that you can kind of,

00:14:11 ◼   ► when you have this digital input method of the D-pad,

00:14:14 ◼   ► you can just know, all right, go over for, up to,

00:14:16 ◼   ► like you can just do it.

00:14:17 ◼   ► It's so precise that I was able to flip through things

00:14:21 ◼   ► really quickly on that and way more accurately.

00:14:23 ◼   ► I made, I think I made one mistake

00:14:25 ◼   ► in the entire setup process.

00:14:27 ◼   ► On Apple TV, I constantly hit the wrong letter, constantly.

00:14:31 ◼   ► - Yeah, and the other good thing is they're sort of

00:14:33 ◼   ► smart auto-suggestion stuff, kind of like the stuff

00:14:36 ◼   ► from Android that Apple copied in iOS.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Like above the keyboard, a series of words appears.

00:14:41 ◼   ► - Right.

00:14:42 ◼   ► - Or like when I'm sending messages

00:14:43 ◼   ► to people related to Destiny,

00:14:45 ◼   ► like I basically typed the first letter of a word

00:14:48 ◼   ► and it knows which word I'm trying to write.

00:14:50 ◼   ► And then I just select it from the pre-selected things

00:14:52 ◼   ► and type the next first letter

00:14:54 ◼   ► and then select it from the pre-selected setup.

00:14:55 ◼   ► 'Cause I don't send a lot of messages.

00:14:57 ◼   ► I should just hook up a keyboard

00:14:58 ◼   ► because it's so painful to try to do it with the pad.

00:15:00 ◼   ► But the audio correction thing,

00:15:02 ◼   ► when you don't say a lot through the interface,

00:15:05 ◼   ► The seven words you do say are always the first suggestion.

00:15:07 ◼   ► So it's pretty good,

00:15:08 ◼   ► but you definitely do check out the touchpad.

00:15:10 ◼   ► It's a little bit awkward to hold it.

00:15:11 ◼   ► So you're like, wait, so I have my thumb on the touchpad

00:15:13 ◼   ► and then my other thumb on the X button,

00:15:15 ◼   ► just like the key, isn't that kind of weird?

00:15:16 ◼   ► And how do I hit the shoulders?

00:15:17 ◼   ► But trust me, it's really great.

00:15:19 ◼   ► - Fair enough.

00:15:22 ◼   ► And then you have a correction, I believe, John,

00:15:24 ◼   ► from last episode.

00:15:26 ◼   ► - Yeah, I made an offhand mark about Swift and Foundation

00:15:30 ◼   ► and getting rid of the NS prefix,

00:15:31 ◼   ► how currently you can, a lot of the APIs,

00:15:35 ◼   ► you can use Swift strings and NS strings

00:15:38 ◼   ► and they will convert between each other

00:15:39 ◼   ► and I referred to that as like a free bridging thing

00:15:42 ◼   ► or toll free bridging or zero cost bridging or whatever.

00:15:45 ◼   ► It's not zero cost.

00:15:46 ◼   ► Swift and foundation bridging is not toll free.

00:15:49 ◼   ► I was thinking of the toll free bridging

00:15:51 ◼   ► between core foundation and foundation.

00:15:52 ◼   ► Too many freaking words that foundation.

00:15:54 ◼   ► But anyway, just to clear that up.

00:15:56 ◼   ► - Response this week by Backblaze.

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00:16:28 ◼   ► You know, my preferred solution here is to have

00:16:31 ◼   ► one or two local backups.

00:16:33 ◼   ► Time Machine is a great example.

00:16:34 ◼   ► Time Machine is very useful.

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00:17:12 ◼   ► that's only on your computer at home,

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00:18:04 ◼   ► All right, so Apple released a thing this week,

00:18:09 ◼   ► and everyone's upset about it.

00:18:13 ◼   ► I kind of am too.

00:18:15 ◼   ► I kind of am too, you guys.

00:18:16 ◼   ► They have released the iPhone 6S Smart Battery Case Panamera.

00:18:21 ◼   ► - This is unfair to the Panamera,

00:18:23 ◼   ► 'cause the Panamera has a fairly continuous curve

00:18:26 ◼   ► over the back of the car.

00:18:27 ◼   ► It's big and it's awkwardly shaped in profile,

00:18:30 ◼   ► but it's not as if, this is closer to the bangle trunk

00:18:34 ◼   ► on the 7 Series, remember that one?

00:18:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's fair, that's fair.

00:18:38 ◼   ► - This looks like they just shipped

00:18:39 ◼   ► an engineering prototype.

00:18:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, it kinda does.

00:18:42 ◼   ► - They were assigned, hey, can you make this weekend,

00:18:45 ◼   ► just make something that works?

00:18:47 ◼   ► And somebody got the wrong memo

00:18:49 ◼   ► and shipped it as a real product.

00:18:50 ◼   ► - All right, so let's describe this

00:18:51 ◼   ► for people listening to the show far disconnected in time.

00:18:53 ◼   ► Imagine an iPhone 6S with Apple silicone case on it.

00:18:58 ◼   ► - With 20% battery life,

00:18:59 ◼   ► 'cause it's three o'clock in the afternoon.

00:19:01 ◼   ► - Give it a chin.

00:19:02 ◼   ► So take the battery case

00:19:05 ◼   ► and extend it downwards a little bit.

00:19:07 ◼   ► And so like that it's got an extra chin hanging off.

00:19:10 ◼   ► Don't worry about why for now.

00:19:11 ◼   ► And then on the back of the phone,

00:19:14 ◼   ► take like, I don't know, maybe seven, eight,

00:19:18 ◼   ► now maybe 15 playing cards from a deck of cards,

00:19:21 ◼   ► put it in there and then slather it with silicone again.

00:19:24 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:19:25 ◼   ► So in other words, there's a lump on the back of this phone

00:19:28 ◼   ► shaped like a rectangle, like a rounded rectangle

00:19:31 ◼   ► that is smaller than the back of the phone.

00:19:33 ◼   ► It is both narrower than the phone

00:19:35 ◼   ► and significantly shorter than the phone.

00:19:37 ◼   ► So there are edges of what look like

00:19:40 ◼   ► just a plain old iPhone 6S in a silicone case with a chin

00:19:43 ◼   ► poking out all around this thing.

00:19:46 ◼   ► And it looks very strange because most other battery cases,

00:19:48 ◼   ► most other third-party battery cases that I've seen,

00:19:51 ◼   ► try to put like a sort of smooth hump

00:19:54 ◼   ► on the back of the thing.

00:19:55 ◼   ► Either they try to just make it to be really thin

00:19:57 ◼   ► and make it look like, is that actually a battery case?

00:19:59 ◼   ► Or is that just like a really thick case

00:20:00 ◼   ► and you can't even tell?

00:20:02 ◼   ► Or you can totally tell it looks like a bar of soap,

00:20:04 ◼   ► but it's essentially a smooth curve

00:20:06 ◼   ► over the entire back surface of the phone,

00:20:08 ◼   ► top to bottom, left to right edge.

00:20:10 ◼   ► And this is the first battery case I can think of,

00:20:12 ◼   ► see, that does not do that,

00:20:14 ◼   ► that does not try to make a big curve over the back,

00:20:16 ◼   ► and also doesn't try to be so thin

00:20:17 ◼   ► it looks like it's not a battery case,

00:20:19 ◼   ► it looks like there's a rectangular thing

00:20:22 ◼   ► hiding inside the back of your iPhone case.

00:20:25 ◼   ► - Yeah.

00:20:26 ◼   ► - It's bad.

00:20:27 ◼   ► - So when you guys say it's bad,

00:20:28 ◼   ► what you're saying is it's ugly.

00:20:30 ◼   ► Is that what you're basically getting at?

00:20:31 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, I mean--

00:20:32 ◼   ► - Yes.

00:20:33 ◼   ► - If somebody would've told you ahead of time

00:20:35 ◼   ► that hey, Apple's gonna make a battery case,

00:20:37 ◼   ► what you would imagine in your head

00:20:40 ◼   ► would be very different than this, you know?

00:20:42 ◼   ► because we expect Apple stuff to be, at minimum, decent looking, often times at the expense

00:20:50 ◼   ► of functionality these days, which is unfortunate, but obviously you expect thinness, you expect

00:20:55 ◼   ► kind of smooth lines, nice curves, kind of minimal design aesthetic, and this is none

00:21:05 ◼   ► of those things. It doesn't look anything like Apple designed it. If you would have

00:21:11 ◼   ► seen this in a weird store window on the streets of Manhattan, you would have assumed it was

00:21:16 ◼   ► a knockoff. Like, it does not look like an Apple product. And in the world of battery

00:21:22 ◼   ► cases, there is no option in a battery case that doesn't look like crap in some way.

00:21:28 ◼   ► They all look like crap in some way.

00:21:30 ◼   ► What about the really thin ones? The ones that are like, you can't even tell they're

00:21:33 ◼   ► a battery case practically. It just looks like it might just be a thick regular case.

00:21:37 ◼   ► I think those look pretty good, with one exception that I'll get to in a second when I tell

00:21:41 ◼   ► I'm not gonna tell you about what I think

00:21:41 ◼   ► of the aesthetics of this thing,

00:21:42 ◼   ► but I think you can't say that they're all ugly.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Like, a lot of them do make the phone bigger,

00:21:48 ◼   ► but the really thin ones that just give you

00:21:50 ◼   ► like a little bit more battery,

00:21:51 ◼   ► I think some of them look pretty good.

00:21:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I would agree with that.

00:21:53 ◼   ► - Right, and by the way,

00:21:54 ◼   ► those usually give more battery than this.

00:21:55 ◼   ► But anyway, there are some that look okay on Amazon pages.

00:21:58 ◼   ► Like, there's an Anker Ultra Slim that,

00:22:01 ◼   ► like, if you look in the Wall Street Journal

00:22:02 ◼   ► by a review of this by Joanna Stern,

00:22:04 ◼   ► there was a picture of three of them next to each other.

00:22:06 ◼   ► There was the Apple one, there was one from Anker,

00:22:08 ◼   ► and I think there was a Mophie,

00:22:09 ◼   ► there was some other one in the middle,

00:22:11 ◼   ► and you would think that in the review

00:22:15 ◼   ► of the Apple battery case, in a comparison photo

00:22:19 ◼   ► next to these way cheaper, way higher capacity cases

00:22:23 ◼   ► from these brands that are not known for great design,

00:22:26 ◼   ► especially like Anker, known for being very utilitarian

00:22:29 ◼   ► and being good value, but not exactly

00:22:31 ◼   ► for stunningly good design, you would assume

00:22:35 ◼   ► that the Apple option in that photo

00:22:37 ◼   ► should obviously be the best looking one.

00:22:39 ◼   ► and you'd probably assume that it would be the most expensive and you'd be right,

00:22:43 ◼   ► you'd probably assume it wouldn't have the best capacity and you'd be right, but

00:22:47 ◼   ► to see it not even be the best looking one while also being the most expensive and having

00:22:52 ◼   ► the worst capacity I think is disappointing to say the least. And that's not to say

00:22:57 ◼   ► that you can't, that isn't to say that they could have done a massively better job

00:23:03 ◼   ► as a battery case with their goals in mind. And we'll talk about their goals in a minute

00:23:08 ◼   ► because we've gotten a little bit more information

00:23:10 ◼   ► since it was released, but it sure does seem like,

00:23:14 ◼   ► they, I don't know, they were given a hard problem,

00:23:17 ◼   ► but it seems like a very disappointing output

00:23:21 ◼   ► to that hard problem, and all of this is underscored

00:23:23 ◼   ► by my base level frustration of,

00:23:27 ◼   ► this shouldn't even be necessary for most people.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Like, 'cause the capacity that it has,

00:23:32 ◼   ► I think it's roughly 1800 milliamp hours,

00:23:36 ◼   ► So by most of the reviews, it can charge the phone

00:23:39 ◼   ► about 80% of the way maybe.

00:23:42 ◼   ► So it isn't the full additional charge,

00:23:45 ◼   ► but it's like you can drain the phone down most of the way

00:23:47 ◼   ► and then you can charge it back up most of the way back up.

00:23:50 ◼   ► Honestly, when I need an extra battery,

00:23:53 ◼   ► I don't usually need more than that.

00:23:56 ◼   ► Like that is a good amount for me.

00:23:58 ◼   ► But people who buy battery cases today,

00:24:00 ◼   ► that's like the smallest you can get

00:24:02 ◼   ► and there's a lot of much bigger options

00:24:03 ◼   ► where you can get like two to four times

00:24:06 ◼   ► the battery capacity in other battery cases.

00:24:08 ◼   ► So it depends on how you're using the phone.

00:24:09 ◼   ► If you're doing like GPS all day as part of your job,

00:24:12 ◼   ► then I could see you needing a lot more.

00:24:14 ◼   ► But honestly, in my use, I complain a lot about the iPhone

00:24:18 ◼   ► having not quite enough battery life and being too thin

00:24:20 ◼   ► and them seemingly prioritizing

00:24:22 ◼   ► thickness and lightness over usable batteries.

00:24:25 ◼   ► But the difference between what the 6 and the 6S has,

00:24:29 ◼   ► have, has, the difference between what they have

00:24:32 ◼   ► and what I need is not that big.

00:24:34 ◼   ► I would be very, very happy if they took the battery

00:24:37 ◼   ► of the 6S and just made it like 25 or 30% bigger,

00:24:41 ◼   ► at most 50% bigger.

00:24:43 ◼   ► You know, like that's all it needs.

00:24:44 ◼   ► It doesn't need to be three times as large, you know?

00:24:48 ◼   ► It needs almost what it has, but just add like,

00:24:51 ◼   ► you know, 25 to 50% more.

00:24:53 ◼   ► That's what it really needs for me.

00:24:55 ◼   ► And from people I've seen in real life,

00:24:57 ◼   ► people I've talked to, it seems like that would cover

00:24:59 ◼   ► way more people's needs than getting anything giant

00:25:04 ◼   ► or the status quo.

00:25:06 ◼   ► Now obviously Apple has way more data than I do,

00:25:08 ◼   ► although honestly I question the metrics they collect

00:25:12 ◼   ► and how well that covers the real world usage.

00:25:16 ◼   ► But anyway, that's a different discussion.

00:25:19 ◼   ► I'm just very sad that Apple's response to the 6S

00:25:23 ◼   ► having clearly, having poor enough battery life

00:25:26 ◼   ► for enough people that this was necessary

00:25:29 ◼   ► to make and release, that they take that indicator

00:25:33 ◼   ► and they say, well, the right answer here is that.

00:25:37 ◼   ► Like that case is the right answer to this problem.

00:25:39 ◼   ► Rather than, if you just put in a battery

00:25:42 ◼   ► that's like 25% bigger to begin with,

00:25:45 ◼   ► then the additional mass and complexity

00:25:49 ◼   ► and efficiency of using that extra battery power

00:25:52 ◼   ► is a tiny fraction of the bulk and the mass

00:25:56 ◼   ► and the complexity of this case.

00:25:58 ◼   ► Because you don't have an extra casing around it,

00:26:00 ◼   ► you don't have extra framing for rigidity

00:26:02 ◼   ► in the middle section,

00:26:03 ◼   ► you don't have the whatever the heck

00:26:04 ◼   ► that passive antenna thing is they're talking about,

00:26:06 ◼   ► I have no idea what that is,

00:26:07 ◼   ► but you don't have that,

00:26:08 ◼   ► you don't have the charging circuitry,

00:26:09 ◼   ► the discharging circuitry,

00:26:11 ◼   ► the reporting back to the phone of your battery level

00:26:13 ◼   ► and then having two different battery bars

00:26:14 ◼   ► and notification center to worry about.

00:26:16 ◼   ► It's so much simpler if you just make the battery

00:26:19 ◼   ► 25% bigger in the phone,

00:26:21 ◼   ► and you cover so much more with that kind of approach.

00:26:24 ◼   ► And I know they don't do that

00:26:25 ◼   ► because they want it to be thinner and lighter,

00:26:27 ◼   ► and they think they're making the right decision,

00:26:29 ◼   ► and maybe they are, but it's frustrating

00:26:31 ◼   ► to be on my side of it when you think they're not,

00:26:33 ◼   ► and this is their solution to that.

00:26:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I completely agree.

00:26:36 ◼   ► You know, I was thinking about it,

00:26:38 ◼   ► and do you remember that sort of cheesy,

00:26:40 ◼   ► but also sort of entertaining video they showed

00:26:42 ◼   ► before WWDC 2013 with like the dancing blobs of ink,

00:26:47 ◼   ► and it was a Thousand Nose video?

00:26:50 ◼   ► Well, I went and found a copy on YouTube,

00:26:53 ◼   ► which we'll link in the show notes.

00:26:54 ◼   ► That video starts as follows.

00:26:56 ◼   ► "If everyone is busy making everything,

00:26:59 ◼   ► "how can anyone perfect anything?"

00:27:01 ◼   ► I feel like I have nothing more to say now.

00:27:05 ◼   ► - That's a mouthful.

00:27:06 ◼   ► - Well, it is a mouthful, but I mean,

00:27:08 ◼   ► we've been talking a lot about how spread thin

00:27:12 ◼   ► we assume Apple to be these days.

00:27:14 ◼   ► Now, I think we're generally referring to software

00:27:16 ◼   ► when we're talking about that, but there's a lot more,

00:27:19 ◼   ► there's a lot more products in Apple's portfolio today

00:27:22 ◼   ► than there were in 2013.

00:27:23 ◼   ► And I feel like this is just an example

00:27:27 ◼   ► of somebody just phoning it in.

00:27:29 ◼   ► And maybe I'm missing the boat,

00:27:30 ◼   ► but jeez, this thing looks just ugly.

00:27:33 ◼   ► It's just, it's not smooth.

00:27:36 ◼   ► I mean, it's smooth, but it's not.

00:27:38 ◼   ► It's bulbous and it's just, ugh.

00:27:40 ◼   ► - I mean, honestly, if I were to get a battery case,

00:27:44 ◼   ► I would consider this one simply because

00:27:46 ◼   ► I like the feel of Apple's first-party cases.

00:27:49 ◼   ► Especially the silicone ones,

00:27:50 ◼   ► I like their feel over the buttons,

00:27:52 ◼   ► the sleep/wake and the volume buttons and everything,

00:27:54 ◼   ► they do feel good over the buttons,

00:27:56 ◼   ► and they do fit well,

00:27:57 ◼   ► and all the other ones look pretty good.

00:28:00 ◼   ► This one, not so much,

00:28:01 ◼   ► but I appreciate the value of Apple's cases

00:28:04 ◼   ► most of the time,

00:28:05 ◼   ► but for me, honestly,

00:28:08 ◼   ► especially when you look at cost,

00:28:11 ◼   ► the first time you buy one of these battery cases,

00:28:13 ◼   ► you're like, oh yeah, this'll make sense.

00:28:14 ◼   ► I'll use it every other day, and it'll be great,

00:28:17 ◼   ► and then as soon as the next iPhone comes out,

00:28:19 ◼   ► and it's a different size, and you can't use it anymore,

00:28:21 ◼   ► like "Why did I buy that $100 battery case that now is worthless to me?" And after

00:28:27 ◼   ► that you typically just buy like the little USB blocks or bricks or you know other ways

00:28:31 ◼   ► to boost your battery after that because you realize like "Oh that was kind of you know

00:28:35 ◼   ► not a great use of my money." So now I've moved on to these little battery bricks and

00:28:41 ◼   ► thin little rectangles and stuff that have battery power in them. I'll link to my favorite

00:28:45 ◼   ► one in the show, it's a $25 and it has more power than the Apple thing. Buy I think twice

00:28:50 ◼   ► as much and fits in your pocket.

00:28:52 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know, I feel like these things

00:28:55 ◼   ► are just admitting failure, and I also feel like

00:28:57 ◼   ► if you look at them cynically, it's very easy

00:29:00 ◼   ► to look at this and say, you know, I think they just

00:29:02 ◼   ► made this to get $100 more out of people

00:29:06 ◼   ► when they buy phones that were previously going

00:29:08 ◼   ► to third-party makers like Mophie and Anchor

00:29:11 ◼   ► and everyone else, it seems like Apple just wants

00:29:14 ◼   ► to capture more of the iPhone accessory revenue

00:29:16 ◼   ► for themselves.

00:29:18 ◼   ► So John, what do you think of this?

00:29:19 ◼   ► Well, you guys are too new to the Apple world, I think, to get the obvious,

00:29:24 ◼   ► "Let's go back and say something, find something that Apple said in the past that makes them look foolish in the present."

00:29:29 ◼   ► You were close when you were going back to the, you know, "Let's not make too many things,"

00:29:33 ◼   ► but you have to go back farther to the, what I call the Flower iMac, not the Flower Power one,

00:29:40 ◼   ► but the one that was on the cover of Time Magazine that had basically like a, looks like a little hemisphere with like a metal arm poking out of it and the screen floating on the metal arm.

00:29:47 ◼   ► You guys remember that one? Oh, yeah. Mm-hmm

00:29:49 ◼   ► all right, so at the introduction to that Steve Jobs was like we wanted to make a flat panel iMac because

00:29:54 ◼   ► Flat panels look cool and they're the future and we were trying to come up with designs

00:29:59 ◼   ► I don't know if this was in the keynote or an interview or whatever, but the story was basically

00:30:02 ◼   ► We thought about taking a flat screen and shoving the guts of the iMac onto the back of it

00:30:08 ◼   ► and

00:30:09 ◼   ► That just seemed ridiculous because it was like this big lumping thing

00:30:14 ◼   ► Jammed onto the back of the screen and it wasn't elegant and so look at the solution we came up with

00:30:17 ◼   ► This was I think maybe the first let every element be true to itself thing like the base is the base it hugs the ground

00:30:24 ◼   ► It's low to the ground. It's a semicircle. It's like boom there. You're the base

00:30:28 ◼   ► and

00:30:30 ◼   ► the screen

00:30:31 ◼   ► We like flat screens because they're flat they're thin and light so let the screen

00:30:35 ◼   ► Be true to itself be light and airy like floating in the air you can reposition it cuz it's on this cool arm that arm

00:30:40 ◼   ► Totally was cool. I love that arm

00:30:42 ◼   ► And it's super thin because I mean not by today's standards like if you look at the the screen on a MacBook Pro

00:30:49 ◼   ► They didn't even know what thin was but anyway

00:30:50 ◼   ► This is a long time ago look how thin it is and it doesn't have all the guts strapped to the back of it of

00:30:54 ◼   ► Course today

00:30:54 ◼   ► You know when they eventually did like the iMac g5 and the big the white flat screen thing eventually

00:30:59 ◼   ► They did shove the innards of the iMac to the back of the screen when they got it to the point where they felt

00:31:02 ◼   ► Like they could shove the innards on the back and not have it look like like a big you know hunchback type thing

00:31:07 ◼   ► Right so here. We are with the battery case

00:31:10 ◼   ► And unfortunately, there's not really any place for the battery to go.

00:31:14 ◼   ► You can't put it on the front, you can't really put it on the sides or the bottom, so it's

00:31:17 ◼   ► kind of got to go on the back.

00:31:20 ◼   ► But when I first saw this, what I tweeted about it was the sort of Johnny Ives, Steve

00:31:25 ◼   ► Jobs explanation for this still kind of fits with the "let each element be true to itself,"

00:31:29 ◼   ► right?

00:31:30 ◼   ► So the phone is one element and the battery is the other.

00:31:31 ◼   ► And it's like, let's not hide the fact that we're jamming a battery on the back of a phone.

00:31:36 ◼   ► So the phone is this skinny little thing and we're going to put a battery on the back of

00:31:41 ◼   ► it and the battery is this other thing, but it's a separate thing.

00:31:44 ◼   ► So rather than trying to blend them together and make you think these are all one piece,

00:31:49 ◼   ► it's either you can decide it's like in script writing parlance, hang a lantern on it or

00:31:52 ◼   ► in the Johnny Ive Steve Jobs parlance, let each element be true to itself.

00:31:56 ◼   ► So this lithium ion battery pack on the back of this phone is being true to itself by going,

00:32:02 ◼   ► here I am, I'm a battery, I'm sticking out here, say hi to me. And, you know, like aesthetically,

00:32:09 ◼   ► because that's what it comes down to, aesthetically speaking, you can decide that that looks ugly,

00:32:14 ◼   ► maybe because it looks different than the other things, maybe because it's just like,

00:32:16 ◼   ► I don't want you to declare yourself to be, I don't want you to be true to yourself, battery,

00:32:20 ◼   ► I want you to minimize yourself, I don't want to know you're there, I want to pretend instead

00:32:24 ◼   ► that I have Marco's phone that he talked about that is actually just an iPhone 6s that has

00:32:28 ◼   ► a little more battery power. And by calling attention to itself in this way that some

00:32:32 ◼   ► people find ugly, it's like, oh, it's really rubbing it in that I have this extra thing

00:32:36 ◼   ► shoved to the back of my phone that used to be nice and elegant, and now it's like a little

00:32:40 ◼   ► hunchback thing. That's kind of gross. So I could see arguments on both sides of that,

00:32:45 ◼   ► but my opinion of this case started to fall two things. One, when I saw that it had a

00:32:51 ◼   ► chin, because I thought surely the company that can make this without a chin is Apple.

00:32:55 ◼   ► the chin is really, I find that substantially alters the feel of the phone.

00:33:01 ◼   ► More than making it thicker, once you start making it longer and wider, I don't like the

00:33:05 ◼   ► chins.

00:33:06 ◼   ► The chins come with compromises, as people have found out, if you buy a Beats headphone,

00:33:10 ◼   ► you cannot plug it into the chin of this thing without an adapter, because the little headphone

00:33:13 ◼   ► jack is just too deep to go through the little adaptory things.

00:33:16 ◼   ► It's not just Beats, John, there are other headphones.

00:33:18 ◼   ► I know, but I'm just saying, I'm pulling out Beats because it's like Apple makes those,

00:33:21 ◼   ► right?

00:33:22 ◼   ► So it's the worst.

00:33:23 ◼   ► It's not like, "Oh, third-party headphones."

00:33:24 ◼   ► essentially first party headphones also don't fit.

00:33:26 ◼   ► The EarPods fit, right, but not headphones

00:33:29 ◼   ► with longer jacks on.

00:33:30 ◼   ► They had to make the little tunnel for the sound come out,

00:33:32 ◼   ► which I'm glad they did that, and the little holes

00:33:35 ◼   ► and tunnels they have to make to get the stuff

00:33:37 ◼   ► that's on the bottom of the phone to come out.

00:33:38 ◼   ► But I think there are third party battery cases

00:33:41 ◼   ► that don't have chins.

00:33:42 ◼   ► Am I wrong in thinking that?

00:33:44 ◼   ► I feel like I've seen them.

00:33:45 ◼   ► - I was able to find one.

00:33:47 ◼   ► I looked for battery cases a few months ago,

00:33:50 ◼   ► and there was one, let me look it up.

00:33:52 ◼   ► I forget the name, but I found it yesterday.

00:33:53 ◼   ► But anyway, I feel like Apple,

00:33:57 ◼   ► not having a chance at something Apple will do,

00:33:58 ◼   ► but the real kicker to me was all that story

00:34:01 ◼   ► I just gave you about the backpack being true to itself

00:34:04 ◼   ► and having the extra capacity or whatever,

00:34:06 ◼   ► when I found out that Apple's battery case

00:34:08 ◼   ► actually has less battery capacity

00:34:10 ◼   ► than the ones that try to hide the fact

00:34:12 ◼   ► that there's a battery, that really killed it

00:34:13 ◼   ► 'cause it's like if you're gonna have a big backpack

00:34:15 ◼   ► and be true to itself and say, "Here I am, I'm a battery,"

00:34:19 ◼   ► at least make that battery really high capacity, right?

00:34:22 ◼   ► at least say, yeah, it's a little bit chunkier

00:34:24 ◼   ► looking than other batteries,

00:34:25 ◼   ► but boy, it's got a lot of capacity, but it doesn't.

00:34:27 ◼   ► It has less capacity than those other ones.

00:34:29 ◼   ► It looks like it should have more

00:34:31 ◼   ► because it calls attention to itself.

00:34:32 ◼   ► It is prominent, and yet the actual battery

00:34:34 ◼   ► in there is smaller.

00:34:36 ◼   ► And so then I feel like, you know,

00:34:37 ◼   ► the battery case that I would have liked,

00:34:40 ◼   ► not that I'm in the market for battery case,

00:34:42 ◼   ► but the one that I would have liked

00:34:43 ◼   ► is either one that was just,

00:34:44 ◼   ► had massive capacity and was really high quality,

00:34:47 ◼   ► or the one that had no chin

00:34:49 ◼   ► and made the battery so thin

00:34:51 ◼   ► you don't even know that it's there. They gave you only a little bit more, maybe more

00:34:55 ◼   ► than Marco's 25, maybe 30%, maybe 40% battery, and that Apple can make a super thin one that's

00:35:01 ◼   ► like, you don't even know it's a battery case. It does look like a little bit case, but it

00:35:04 ◼   ► gives your phone a boost, right? Both of those products I think would be nicer products as

00:35:09 ◼   ► far as I'm concerned. Now I don't think the existence of a battery case means that either

00:35:16 ◼   ► Apple is admitting the success has bad battery life, and I actually don't think the success

00:35:19 ◼   ► has bad battery life. It really depends on for you individually. If it doesn't have enough

00:35:23 ◼   ► battery life for the way you use the phone, then yes, you need to have a battery pack.

00:35:26 ◼   ► But I think that the battery life on the 6S is reasonable, but as we've discussed many,

00:35:30 ◼   ► many times, I also think there is a place in Apple's product line for a phone that is

00:35:35 ◼   ► bigger and gets more battery life that is not the 6S Plus. Because that's forcing you

00:35:40 ◼   ► to say, "Hey, if you want more battery life, Apple makes a phone for you. Also, it's the

00:35:43 ◼   ► size of a freaking tablet." And I feel like there's a place in their line to say, "And

00:35:48 ◼   ► And I feel like the 6s is that place actually.

00:35:50 ◼   ► Like if they come up with a 4-inch phone, that one should be super thin and small.

00:35:54 ◼   ► And then the 6s should be a little bit thicker to have more battery, and then the 6 Plus

00:35:57 ◼   ► should be the way it is.

00:35:58 ◼   ► Or maybe add something between it.

00:36:00 ◼   ► I think there's a place somewhere in the lineup for a thick phone that is not gargantuan.

00:36:04 ◼   ► But they don't want to make the phone, they want to keep making these skinny things.

00:36:07 ◼   ► And if you need more capacity from it, you put this case on.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And I see tons of people with battery cases in real life on all sizes of iPhones.

00:36:16 ◼   ► the 5s size, the 4s, the 6, the 6s.

00:36:19 ◼   ► Lots and lots of battery cases,

00:36:20 ◼   ► because those people know, like,

00:36:21 ◼   ► I'm gonna use my phone all day

00:36:22 ◼   ► and I can't use it without the battery case.

00:36:24 ◼   ► The battery case essentially becomes part of the phone.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I also don't fault Apple for making a case.

00:36:29 ◼   ► I don't think they're spreading themselves too thin.

00:36:30 ◼   ► Marco was like,

00:36:31 ◼   ► "Oh, they just wanna get 100 more dollars out of people?"

00:36:32 ◼   ► Of course they do.

00:36:33 ◼   ► Why would they not?

00:36:34 ◼   ► Like, are they somehow morally obligated

00:36:35 ◼   ► not to make an accessory?

00:36:37 ◼   ► They should make an access--

00:36:38 ◼   ► It's weird to have a manufacturer not make accessories.

00:36:41 ◼   ► It's like Honda not making bras for your car.

00:36:43 ◼   ► It's not like they want you to put a bra on your car,

00:36:45 ◼   ► but they're sure as hell gonna make one

00:36:46 ◼   ► because you want a broad like,

00:36:47 ◼   ► Honda's like, we'll sell you one, here you go.

00:36:49 ◼   ► Like maybe that's a bad example of a car browse,

00:36:51 ◼   ► but I'm just going back to neutral days.

00:36:53 ◼   ► But yeah, no, Apple should totally sell every accessory.

00:36:56 ◼   ► Why allow only third parties to make an accessory

00:36:59 ◼   ► that a huge number of people buy?

00:37:00 ◼   ► What was the status on something like Apple,

00:37:02 ◼   ► according to Apple's own statistics or something like?

00:37:04 ◼   ► - 70 something percent.

00:37:05 ◼   ► - 78% of people put a case on their iPhones.

00:37:08 ◼   ► Of course Apple should sell cases.

00:37:10 ◼   ► And if some of those people want better,

00:37:11 ◼   ► of course they should make them.

00:37:12 ◼   ► In fact, Apple should make three battery cases.

00:37:14 ◼   ► Like I have no objection to them doing that.

00:37:16 ◼   ► I think they absolutely should,

00:37:18 ◼   ► if only like to raise the game

00:37:19 ◼   ► of the third party manufacturer.

00:37:21 ◼   ► So while this is a little bit of a disappointing product,

00:37:26 ◼   ► there are some explanations for it

00:37:27 ◼   ► that we'll get to in a second,

00:37:29 ◼   ► but I think they should totally make a battery case.

00:37:32 ◼   ► I can come up with a plausible explanation

00:37:35 ◼   ► for the aesthetics of this case,

00:37:36 ◼   ► even if you think it's ugly, you think it's ugly,

00:37:38 ◼   ► like, you know, your opinion is your opinion, right?

00:37:40 ◼   ► I mean, we all see people with cases

00:37:42 ◼   ► that we think are ugly, but somebody loves them.

00:37:44 ◼   ► And if anything, I wish Apple would just make

00:37:46 ◼   ► more battery cases.

00:37:47 ◼   ► So I think this is a good first run at a battery case.

00:37:50 ◼   ► And at the very least, it's got us talking about it

00:37:52 ◼   ► and it's interesting.

00:37:52 ◼   ► It is not boring.

00:37:53 ◼   ► Let's give it that.

00:37:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, by the way, the case I was thinking of,

00:37:56 ◼   ► and I couldn't remember it before, was the Sola Memo.

00:37:59 ◼   ► I don't think I'm pronouncing that right.

00:38:01 ◼   ► There's a couple of them.

00:38:02 ◼   ► There's a new version and an old version on Amazon

00:38:04 ◼   ► for like 50 bucks each.

00:38:06 ◼   ► And the old version, this is the only battery case

00:38:08 ◼   ► I've ever seen that has no chin.

00:38:10 ◼   ► And it basically has an internal lightning port

00:38:12 ◼   ► that plugs in kind of up the bottom of the phone

00:38:15 ◼   ► and like moves the real connector down slightly

00:38:18 ◼   ► and it uses its additional thickness

00:38:20 ◼   ► of being a battery case to give you a lightning port

00:38:22 ◼   ► that's just like down lower than like just below

00:38:25 ◼   ► the real one.

00:38:26 ◼   ► - Does it really give you a lightning port?

00:38:27 ◼   ► 'Cause that was, I thought that was one of the claims

00:38:29 ◼   ► of this, like it wasn't this from,

00:38:30 ◼   ► it was in the Mashable Arab I think.

00:38:31 ◼   ► The first battery case to have a fully featured

00:38:34 ◼   ► lightning connector.

00:38:34 ◼   ► That was a claim I read somewhere

00:38:36 ◼   ► about the Apple lightning case.

00:38:37 ◼   ► - Well yeah, but the keywords there are fully featured

00:38:40 ◼   ► because you're both right.

00:38:41 ◼   ► this does take a lightning connector,

00:38:44 ◼   ► but it doesn't put the battery status

00:38:47 ◼   ► and notification center and stuff like that

00:38:48 ◼   ► that only the first party case can do.

00:38:50 ◼   ► - Well, is that a fully featured lightning connector?

00:38:52 ◼   ► That's a feature that, granted, Apple can only do

00:38:53 ◼   ► 'cause they're the only ones who can change the OS,

00:38:55 ◼   ► but is the lightning connector fully featured on that one?

00:38:57 ◼   ► Anyway, like--

00:38:58 ◼   ► - The first version of this one had a big problem

00:39:01 ◼   ► according to the reviews of blocking cell signals

00:39:03 ◼   ► 'cause it had a metal frame,

00:39:04 ◼   ► and everyone said that it blocked your signal.

00:39:07 ◼   ► And this updated version now says,

00:39:09 ◼   ► it's updated now, new design,

00:39:10 ◼   ► that absolutely will not interfere with your signal.

00:39:12 ◼   ► So I just ordered one, I'm gonna try it.

00:39:14 ◼   ► I'll report back and see if that actually is true

00:39:17 ◼   ► because it's extremely thin relative to most battery cases

00:39:21 ◼   ► and it has no chin.

00:39:23 ◼   ► So the bulk of it is significantly reduced.

00:39:26 ◼   ► And if this is actually good and works

00:39:29 ◼   ► and doesn't block the cell signal meaningfully,

00:39:31 ◼   ► then I would say it's kind of embarrassing for Apple,

00:39:34 ◼   ► but I'm guessing there's gonna be some problem with this.

00:39:38 ◼   ► There has to be some reason why no one else

00:39:40 ◼   ► that makes cases like this.

00:39:41 ◼   ► - Is there any other color besides white?

00:39:43 ◼   ► I'm not trying to be funny, I'm really asking.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - It is a black one.

00:39:45 ◼   ► - No, but the black one's the old version.

00:39:47 ◼   ► - Oh, I thought you meant the apple one, yeah.

00:39:49 ◼   ► No, the apple one only comes in black and white,

00:39:50 ◼   ► which is kind of boring too.

00:39:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, that's also true, but yeah, we'll see.

00:39:54 ◼   ► We'll see if they actually sell.

00:39:54 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure they're gonna sell it.

00:39:56 ◼   ► Also, one thing to consider that that is even more cynical

00:39:59 ◼   ► than they just made it to get accessory money.

00:40:01 ◼   ► - But why is that, like, you always say that,

00:40:03 ◼   ► like, they just made it, like, oh, do they,

00:40:06 ◼   ► that's what they make products for.

00:40:07 ◼   ► Like, I mean, they wanna make great products, blah, blah,

00:40:09 ◼   ► but they just made it to make money?

00:40:11 ◼   ► Like how can you say that is a bad thing about like--

00:40:13 ◼   ► - I guess that's true.

00:40:14 ◼   ► - Like, you know what I mean?

00:40:16 ◼   ► There's one, I'm trying to think of,

00:40:17 ◼   ► is there a situation where you could say

00:40:18 ◼   ► this was just a money,

00:40:19 ◼   ► I guess you could say it's a money grab

00:40:21 ◼   ► if they put out a product that they put minimal effort into

00:40:26 ◼   ► just to get the money based on their name.

00:40:28 ◼   ► And I don't think that's this

00:40:30 ◼   ► because you may think it's ugly

00:40:32 ◼   ► and may disagree with the compromises they made,

00:40:34 ◼   ► but it looks like it's up to the standards

00:40:36 ◼   ► of all Apple first party cases in terms of fit and finish

00:40:39 ◼   ► and the thoughtfulness of the features.

00:40:41 ◼   ► Again, whether you disagree with them or not,

00:40:43 ◼   ► like it doesn't look like a piece of junk.

00:40:44 ◼   ► So I think that's, maybe that's how you could call it

00:40:46 ◼   ► a money grab.

00:40:46 ◼   ► If they put out something that just looked like

00:40:49 ◼   ► a piece of junk, that it didn't feel good,

00:40:50 ◼   ► it didn't look good, it didn't fit right,

00:40:52 ◼   ► maybe the only thing I can think of there

00:40:54 ◼   ► is like the iPad One case you could say that about.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Like they just put this out to make money

00:40:58 ◼   ► because that looked like a piece of crap

00:41:00 ◼   ► and it looked like it was slapped together.

00:41:01 ◼   ► Because we might as well say they just made a small laptop

00:41:03 ◼   ► as a money grab for people who want a smaller laptop.

00:41:05 ◼   ► Well, yeah, it's for people who want a smaller laptop.

00:41:08 ◼   ► You know?

00:41:09 ◼   ► That's all fair, but okay, so carry this on

00:41:11 ◼   ► to its logical conclusion then, and then we have a problem,

00:41:13 ◼   ► because now, they now have an incentive

00:41:17 ◼   ► to not improve the iPhone battery life,

00:41:20 ◼   ► to keep it to being almost sufficient for enough people,

00:41:25 ◼   ► but just painful enough that a large portion

00:41:28 ◼   ► of their customers will wanna buy

00:41:30 ◼   ► this additional $100 part.

00:41:31 ◼   ► It's just like the 16 gig problem.

00:41:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, I don't know if a large portion of people

00:41:34 ◼   ► are gonna buy, like-- - No, I'm saying,

00:41:36 ◼   ► but now they have the incentive to keep the status quo.

00:41:38 ◼   ► incentive to do what? They're already doing that. I think the 6 Plus has given them a

00:41:45 ◼   ► little bit of cover on this to say, "You always said you wanted a phone with more battery

00:41:49 ◼   ► capacity, well we made one." And you're like, "Yeah, but it's so big. Oh, you want everything

00:41:53 ◼   ► now it has to be exactly the size you want with exactly the battery capacity. Our testing

00:41:57 ◼   ► shows the blah, blah, blah." I mean, as someone who uses a 6 all day and the battery, I mean,

00:42:02 ◼   ► I don't use it all day, but anyway, I use it every day and the battery is totally fine

00:42:06 ◼   ► for me. But I also know people who can't get through half a day with their 6, and we all

00:42:10 ◼   ► have the same phone, it just depends on your usage pattern. So there's such a variability

00:42:13 ◼   ► in usage pattern, it's very difficult to say whether they've over or undersized anything.

00:42:19 ◼   ► If this battery case gives them cover, I don't think so, because battery cases existed already.

00:42:22 ◼   ► So whatever cover that you think they're getting by having a battery case, they already had

00:42:26 ◼   ► that cover, because there's this huge market for battery cases that I see everywhere for

00:42:29 ◼   ► the people who torture their phones, who need to have a really long, you know, so I don't

00:42:34 ◼   ► think they needed to make this case to get that cover.

00:42:36 ◼   ► - No, I think that's fair, but I think this

00:42:38 ◼   ► dramatically increases that cut for them,

00:42:40 ◼   ► because now they can point to this and they can say,

00:42:42 ◼   ► well, you know what, if you don't like the battery life

00:42:44 ◼   ► of your six or whatever the new mainline iPhone is,

00:42:48 ◼   ► if you don't like the battery life of that,

00:42:50 ◼   ► it isn't our problem to fix.

00:42:51 ◼   ► We offer you these battery cases for an extra $99.

00:42:54 ◼   ► - It was better when they could say,

00:42:56 ◼   ► if we don't like the battery life, it isn't our problem,

00:42:58 ◼   ► buy one of these less than $99 battery cases

00:43:00 ◼   ► that offer more capacity.

00:43:01 ◼   ► If anything, this weakens their story,

00:43:03 ◼   ► because now they're gonna always be pitching theirs first,

00:43:04 ◼   ► which has lower capacity and a higher price.

00:43:07 ◼   ► - The problem here is that this at least,

00:43:09 ◼   ► by having a first party option that they believe is good,

00:43:12 ◼   ► this gives them permission internally

00:43:15 ◼   ► when making these design decisions

00:43:17 ◼   ► to no longer really think about giving more battery life

00:43:20 ◼   ► to people built into the phone.

00:43:21 ◼   ► - I think they'll still think about it

00:43:23 ◼   ► exactly the same amount.

00:43:24 ◼   ► I mean, as I've said from many years back

00:43:26 ◼   ► to the old Hypercritic episode about naked robotic core,

00:43:28 ◼   ► this seems to be the strategy

00:43:30 ◼   ► they've been pursuing for a long time.

00:43:31 ◼   ► A lot of people tweeted, say,

00:43:32 ◼   ► "Oh, this is the naked robotic core theory.

00:43:33 ◼   ► "It's finally come."

00:43:34 ◼   ► It's been here the whole time.

00:43:35 ◼   ► Like, you know, this is, it's not a new thing.

00:43:39 ◼   ► The thing that they've been doing is make it as thin and light as possible as you can

00:43:43 ◼   ► to be useful to, you know, to somebody, to a lot of people, and then allow people to

00:43:48 ◼   ► add to it.

00:43:49 ◼   ► And as Mark was pointing out many times, then you've got to have seven extra layers of,

00:43:52 ◼   ► you know, essentially filler between there, because you've got to have walls between your

00:43:56 ◼   ► batteries and the batteries have to be inside cases, and there's going to be a case on the

00:43:58 ◼   ► outside that's inefficient.

00:44:00 ◼   ► So they're going to keep dancing around in that line.

00:44:03 ◼   ► I really think that none of us would be discussing this if they made a thicker iPhone 6.

00:44:09 ◼   ► Maybe even also keep the thin one, make a thicker one for all day use or on the go things.

00:44:14 ◼   ► It's all about diversifying the product line.

00:44:15 ◼   ► They really have diversified it a lot.

00:44:16 ◼   ► They just can keep going.

00:44:18 ◼   ► Maybe they consider this a diversification, but I think this is more of an accessor-ication?

00:44:23 ◼   ► Accessorizing-ication.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Whatever.

00:44:25 ◼   ► Anyway, they're adding accessories, which is one way to go to make your line more diverse,

00:44:29 ◼   ► but it is no substitute for actually making your line more diverse.

00:44:33 ◼   ► And it isn't that ridiculous to think of them making another iPhone model that still is

00:44:40 ◼   ► the same size as their mid-range one that just has a bigger battery.

00:44:43 ◼   ► Because this is their most important product, they make more of them than anything else,

00:44:47 ◼   ► and they have all sorts of such customizations in their other product lines.

00:44:50 ◼   ► So it wouldn't be that ridiculous of a concept.

00:44:53 ◼   ► Yeah, if the 4-inch phone comes back, then you'll see it's ripe for that.

00:44:56 ◼   ► If a 4-inch phone comes back, it's like, "See, Apple is not afraid to make sure..."

00:45:00 ◼   ► Because with the iPhone being such an important product, there's one thing where they want

00:45:04 ◼   ► to have economies of scale, but the other thing is you want to make sure you get as

00:45:07 ◼   ► much of the market as possible.

00:45:08 ◼   ► It's the whole reason they made bigger phones.

00:45:10 ◼   ► It was like, well, a lot of people do want bigger phones, so let's make a bigger phone.

00:45:13 ◼   ► In fact, let's not just make a bigger phone.

00:45:15 ◼   ► Let's make two bigger phones, because if we make it one size, it's not going to be big

00:45:19 ◼   ► enough for the people who want the huge one.

00:45:20 ◼   ► But if we make just the huge one, people are going to flip out because they want the not-so-huge

00:45:23 ◼   ► one.

00:45:24 ◼   ► And like I said, if they make the 4-inch, it will show that we understand that people

00:45:27 ◼   ► on all different sizes and then maybe someday, like either they have to make a thicker phone

00:45:32 ◼   ► someday or someday eventually the innards will take up so little power that this will

00:45:36 ◼   ► be a moot point and we'll just cross the 24 hour barrier and then we won't have to worry

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00:47:38 ◼   ► - I was gonna say, we actually have

00:47:39 ◼   ► some useful information here.

00:47:42 ◼   ► Apple, in another strange turn of events,

00:47:44 ◼   ► is actually talking to the press about the, of all things,

00:47:47 ◼   ► about the little lump on the back of their thing,

00:47:49 ◼   ► which like, when did this come out?

00:47:51 ◼   ► Like earlier in the week, I guess?

00:47:52 ◼   ► - Yesterday, I think.

00:47:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, and then Apple already is talking again,

00:47:56 ◼   ► talking to the tech press and saying,

00:47:57 ◼   ► we would like to talk to you about the mean things

00:47:59 ◼   ► people are saying about our battery case.

00:48:01 ◼   ► They had, you know, I'm not gonna say some excuses,

00:48:04 ◼   ► let's say some explanations about

00:48:05 ◼   ► what is the deal with this case?

00:48:07 ◼   ► Why the hell is it like that?

00:48:08 ◼   ► Why doesn't, one question is, that lump on the back.

00:48:11 ◼   ► Fine, you wanna have a lump on the back,

00:48:12 ◼   ► you don't want it to be smoothed over,

00:48:14 ◼   ► that's an aesthetic decision.

00:48:15 ◼   ► Why doesn't the lump on the back

00:48:16 ◼   ► go all the way from the top to the bottom of the phone?

00:48:18 ◼   ► Why does it look like a band-aid where it's like there's the lumpy part in the middle and the flat part?

00:48:22 ◼   ► and Marco already talked about this like and

00:48:24 ◼   ► The their explanation is it's about cellular reception that if you put the battery over the top and the bottom of the you know

00:48:33 ◼   ► Over the whole thing the antenna lines and the success are in the top and the bottom

00:48:37 ◼   ► You don't want to block the antenna with a battery because it's not radio transparent

00:48:41 ◼   ► And so they're keeping the battery away from the the radio parts and that gives better

00:48:47 ◼   ► Reception which I can kind of understand that's something you have to deal with

00:48:50 ◼   ► If you really do coat the entire back of the phone with a battery, it's gonna hurt reception

00:48:54 ◼   ► People who have battery cases that are not that do hurt their reception know that it happens and it can be annoying

00:49:01 ◼   ► So they avoided it just by not putting the battery there

00:49:03 ◼   ► Did you have to stay so far away from the things could you made it again?

00:49:07 ◼   ► I say if you if you're gonna put the big lump

00:49:09 ◼   ► Why not make the lump thicker like when I go out and have more capacities really is depressing to me taper it maybe yeah

00:49:14 ◼   ► Well, I mean I guess it comes when it comes down to an aesthetic decision

00:49:17 ◼   ► like you could have left the battery the same exact size and

00:49:19 ◼   ► Filled in the part with like essentially a radio transparent taper. It's not battery that's covering the things

00:49:25 ◼   ► They're just taper, but I think the paper comes down to aesthetics

00:49:27 ◼   ► And the other thing is I don't know if this is a legit complaint, but this is Apple story

00:49:32 ◼   ► that a lot of the battery cases like the Mophies and stuff are two-piece things that are hard to get the phone in and

00:49:38 ◼   ► Out of and at the Apple one because the battery doesn't extend all the way up to the top

00:49:41 ◼   ► The top is like bendy and you could just bend the top back and then slide the phone

00:49:45 ◼   ► How do you think I lost the video of this?

00:49:47 ◼   ► And they're very excited and proud about the fact that it's easy to get the phone in and out

00:49:51 ◼   ► I don't know how many people are taking their phones in and out of battery cases a lot

00:49:54 ◼   ► Maybe it's because they're so hard to get in and out of like those really tight-fitting battery cases

00:49:59 ◼   ► But is that you know, I guess it's okay to say hey

00:50:03 ◼   ► We made it really easy to get the phone in and out

00:50:04 ◼   ► But I just don't see someone coming home every day and taking their phone out or putting it in

00:50:08 ◼   ► It doesn't seem like a frequent activity to me

00:50:10 ◼   ► I you know and that's true of any case not just battery case like I never take my cases off my phone

00:50:15 ◼   ► And you shouldn't because you'll find all the weird dust and stuff that collects up there, and it's gross

00:50:19 ◼   ► well, it's funny you say that because I

00:50:22 ◼   ► Typically use the Apple leather case for my iPhone because like Marco was saying earlier

00:50:27 ◼   ► You know I happen to like the feel of it

00:50:29 ◼   ► It is a little bit exorbitantly expensive

00:50:31 ◼   ► But not only more it when when you when we bought our sixth generation ones it was like 60 bucks now

00:50:36 ◼   ► they're 45. Oh, is that right? I didn't know that. Yeah, they dropped it with the S-generation.

00:50:40 ◼   ► Oh, I didn't know that. So that's not quite so bad. But anyway, the only time I use battery

00:50:45 ◼   ► case, though, which I do have, I have a Lenmar one, which I really liked until Marco showed

00:50:50 ◼   ► me this one that we were talking about a minute ago, which I kind of am blusting over now.

00:50:55 ◼   ► But anyway. Well, let me get it first, and I'll tell you if it sucks. Yeah, exactly.

00:51:00 ◼   ► But I have this Lenmar battery case, which is just a cheaper knockoff of the Mophies,

00:51:05 ◼   ► And it works really well, and I really like it.

00:51:08 ◼   ► But the only time I ever use it is either a conference or when I'm at a football game

00:51:12 ◼   ► when I'm not going to be around, you know, wall power for hours and hours and hours and

00:51:17 ◼   ► hours.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Other than that, I never ever use this case.

00:51:20 ◼   ► And so getting my phone out of the Apple leather case and into the Lenmar case is useful to

00:51:25 ◼   ► have that easier.

00:51:27 ◼   ► But I by and large agree with you that it's not the sort of thing that I'm doing daily.

00:51:32 ◼   ► I'm doing it like once a week during the fall, and then maybe daily during WWDC.

00:51:40 ◼   ► But that's it.

00:51:41 ◼   ► That's frequent enough that I would say easy in and out would be good, although I do have

00:51:44 ◼   ► to wonder, especially with these things, like the more times you take the thing in and out,

00:51:47 ◼   ► the more loose it kind of possibly gets, and the more you could trap things between it.

00:51:51 ◼   ► That's another thing they talk about on the Apple website, that they have the microfiber

00:51:54 ◼   ► on the inside, that it's cleaning your phone when you put it in there.

00:51:57 ◼   ► It's like, there's no getting around the fact that if you happen to get like three pieces

00:51:59 ◼   ► is a sand in there and you shove your phone inside it, microfiber or not, you're gonna

00:52:03 ◼   ► make scratches. The other thing is about the lump, I mean Apple has talked about like grip

00:52:08 ◼   ► ability and stuff and how it's also better for that and Gruber said he actually, rather

00:52:11 ◼   ► than putting his thumb, his pinky on the bottom like you guys do, with the lump you can put

00:52:16 ◼   ► your pinky under the lump instead of under the very bottom of the phone which probably

00:52:19 ◼   ► helps because the chin is making the very bottom of the phone go even lower down. So

00:52:22 ◼   ► resting your pinky underneath the lump could be a comfortable way to do it. Like having

00:52:27 ◼   ► never held one of these I can't really think about how it would feel. Would it feel awkward

00:52:30 ◼   ► or would it feel better like giving you an extra place to grip like a handhold, that

00:52:34 ◼   ► lump on the back. But the Apple silicon case is nice. My wife has one on her iPhone and

00:52:41 ◼   ► the lump thing, I don't know. What I keep coming back to is many of our discussions

00:52:47 ◼   ► about past Apple products have been that they favor form over function. We've talked about

00:52:54 ◼   ► the MacBook One and the single port and how everything has to be so skinny and how the

00:52:57 ◼   ► phones are skinny and how everything has to be so, you know, like just made like a sculpture,

00:53:01 ◼   ► the Apple mouse, the tiny keyboards, the half size arrow keys, form over function, form

00:53:05 ◼   ► over function too much, you know, but they can't make it ugly for one little bit of extra

00:53:09 ◼   ► functionality. They just said, no, can we just make it beautiful and do the best we

00:53:11 ◼   ► can within those constraints? And one thing you can say about this case is that it absolutely

00:53:15 ◼   ► does not put form in front of function, right? Nope. Right. So, cause not because, not necessarily

00:53:21 ◼   ► because it's ugly, but because like look it has a job to do and it doesn't really spend

00:53:26 ◼   ► a lot of time figuring out how to make it look like a beautiful piece of sculpture,

00:53:32 ◼   ► right?

00:53:33 ◼   ► And again, getting back to it being true to itself, I think that old iMac design, I love

00:53:36 ◼   ► that iMac design so much, I felt like that iMac design had both in that they said, you

00:53:41 ◼   ► know, let the function dictate the form.

00:53:45 ◼   ► We can't figure out a way to get these internals in the back of the screen and have it look

00:53:48 ◼   ► look decent so don't even try. Have the screen and have the screen be free by itself and

00:53:53 ◼   ► have it, you can move it anywhere. You can twist it around, you can move it up, you can

00:53:55 ◼   ► move it down, it stays where you put it. It was awesome, right? And the base, it also

00:53:59 ◼   ► looks beautiful but it was also totally stable, stays right there, it's small. The base of

00:54:04 ◼   ► that iMac was actually a lower amount of volume I believe than the Power Mac G4 Cube so it

00:54:11 ◼   ► was actually smaller than you thought it was. What you want is a beautiful blending of it

00:54:14 ◼   ► But this one, when it came time to choose,

00:54:17 ◼   ► should we like smooth this thing over

00:54:20 ◼   ► and try to hide all this stuff and, you know,

00:54:24 ◼   ► make it look like a beautiful piece of sculpture,

00:54:26 ◼   ► perhaps sacrificing something of utility,

00:54:28 ◼   ► like maybe not having a good lightning pass through

00:54:31 ◼   ► or maybe having ridiculously low battery capacity

00:54:34 ◼   ► to make it completely invisible and not useful to people,

00:54:36 ◼   ► except for Marco who wanted more than an extra 20%.

00:54:39 ◼   ► They didn't, and they made a different choice.

00:54:41 ◼   ► And when they make a different choice,

00:54:43 ◼   ► Their reward is a million articles saying,

00:54:45 ◼   ► you have too much function

00:54:46 ◼   ► and you should have paid more attention to form

00:54:48 ◼   ► 'cause I think what you made is ugly.

00:54:49 ◼   ► And I guess that's because people think the ugliness

00:54:52 ◼   ► is a result of them not paying enough attention to looks.

00:54:55 ◼   ► If they just made something that was ugly,

00:54:57 ◼   ► like say they made the MacBook One,

00:54:59 ◼   ► that had one port and everyone was pissed about one port

00:55:02 ◼   ► and it was ugly on top of that, you couldn't say,

00:55:04 ◼   ► well, you said you wanted form or function over form.

00:55:07 ◼   ► So you would say, no, no, they screwed up both.

00:55:09 ◼   ► It is both not useful 'cause it has one stupid port

00:55:12 ◼   ► and it's ugly as sin.

00:55:12 ◼   ► Instead, they made this beautiful thing that has one port.

00:55:15 ◼   ► And then you could simply say, well, they wanted to make it beautiful and thin, and

00:55:19 ◼   ► then making a statement with this one port, and the scalped batteries and all this other

00:55:22 ◼   ► stuff.

00:55:23 ◼   ► Like they spent so much, all this technology and effort to make this beautiful thing.

00:55:27 ◼   ► And we agree that it's beautiful, so we say yes, you did that, but you did the wrong balance.

00:55:30 ◼   ► In this one, we don't agree that it's beautiful.

00:55:32 ◼   ► We feel like you have not made it beautiful, so we're going to say that you didn't go for

00:55:37 ◼   ► form.

00:55:38 ◼   ► Instead, you must have gone for function.

00:55:39 ◼   ► And you look at it functionally like, well, it's easy to take in and out.

00:55:42 ◼   ► It has a battery in it, has lightning pass through.

00:55:45 ◼   ► The only thing you could maybe ding them on is if you really wanted to go with form over

00:55:48 ◼   ► function you would have made the chin even bigger so you could fit the long headphone

00:55:51 ◼   ► jacks in it.

00:55:52 ◼   ► But this does feel to me like a different balance than usual of form over function from

00:55:57 ◼   ► Apple, if only because we all disagree about the form being beautiful.

00:56:02 ◼   ► And I want to encourage that because half the time all we're saying is don't make your

00:56:06 ◼   ► things beautiful sculptures because then you end up in absurd situations like the harpoon

00:56:09 ◼   ► turtle mouse.

00:56:10 ◼   ► more about form and then we all yell at them.

00:56:13 ◼   ► So I can empathize with Apple and feel like we can't win with these guys.

00:56:18 ◼   ► Well the right answer here is to recognize that if it is truly not possible to make a

00:56:24 ◼   ► really good external battery case for an iPhone that also looks good, and good looks are important

00:56:30 ◼   ► to Apple, then the answer is to reduce or remove the need for external battery cases.

00:56:35 ◼   ► Yeah, like reducing it that's where it comes down to like how much if you added 10% capacity

00:56:40 ◼   ► How much do you reduce the need 20% capacity?

00:56:42 ◼   ► Like when do you get to the point where you're actually reducing the need because I think the people who need like those big mofis

00:56:47 ◼   ► their Apple should never make a phone as big as those big mofis or like even like

00:56:51 ◼   ► 80% is big like so take one of the big mofis cut out all the intermediary plastic and merge that that those milliamp hours

00:56:58 ◼   ► Into the phone that's too big for Apple to make right but people have those needs and so there's always gonna mean

00:57:04 ◼   ► for some battery packs, and I just don't know what the ratio is of like of all the people

00:57:07 ◼   ► who need a battery packs, how many people could get away with just adding 20%, 30%,

00:57:12 ◼   ► right? So that's kind of what the third-party battery manufacturers are doing, and if Apple

00:57:17 ◼   ► is not privy to that information because their surveys or focus groups don't work, that is

00:57:21 ◼   ► a motivation for Apple to make seven different sizes of battery packs, and then hey, Apple,

00:57:24 ◼   ► you'll have your own information about exactly how much more capacity people need, and you

00:57:27 ◼   ► can use that to decide how thick to make the next phone or what target battery life or

00:57:32 ◼   ► whatever.

00:57:33 ◼   ► severe distance center to ever do so

00:57:34 ◼   ► because that'll reduce the iPhone ASP?

00:57:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think by making one case,

00:57:40 ◼   ► this will give them some information,

00:57:42 ◼   ► some real first-hand information

00:57:43 ◼   ► about what people want out of battery cases.

00:57:46 ◼   ► And if they make more battery cases,

00:57:47 ◼   ► that'll give them even more information.

00:57:49 ◼   ► Like they're always making that calculus.

00:57:50 ◼   ► How big do we make the battery in this phone?

00:57:52 ◼   ► Should we be going for a target battery life,

00:57:53 ◼   ► like the iPad, where we just go for 10 hours all the time,

00:57:55 ◼   ► we think we're okay with that?

00:57:57 ◼   ► I don't know, what do you think their target is

00:57:58 ◼   ► for the iPhones?

00:57:59 ◼   ► They seem to vary more.

00:58:00 ◼   ► Someone did a chart recently.

00:58:01 ◼   ► They seemed like it was kind of consistent,

00:58:03 ◼   ► but a little bit lumpy.

00:58:04 ◼   ► The iPads were more of a straight line

00:58:06 ◼   ► and the iPhone history was a little bit lumpy

00:58:08 ◼   ► up and down here and there,

00:58:09 ◼   ► but maybe they're just holding their breath and saying,

00:58:12 ◼   ► if we just wait a little bit longer

00:58:14 ◼   ► and we get Intel to manufacture the A11 for us

00:58:17 ◼   ► at whatever insane feature size

00:58:18 ◼   ► that they're up to at that point,

00:58:20 ◼   ► and we make everything so low power,

00:58:23 ◼   ► eventually this will just be a moot point.

00:58:25 ◼   ► We just need to get across that finish line.

00:58:26 ◼   ► It's already a moot point on iPads.

00:58:28 ◼   ► They're already on iPads like saying,

00:58:29 ◼   ► I'm gonna just fill that space with empty space

00:58:31 ◼   ► with the speakers.

00:58:32 ◼   ► Like 10 hours is fine.

00:58:33 ◼   ► And we pretty much all agree, like for the most part,

00:58:35 ◼   ► 10 hours so far is fine for the iPads.

00:58:38 ◼   ► For the phones, they're always on the ragged edge of,

00:58:40 ◼   ► we don't wanna make it really big and thick,

00:58:43 ◼   ► but we also want it to last kind of all day.

00:58:45 ◼   ► And we know we can't really make it last all day

00:58:46 ◼   ► because that would just be way too big.

00:58:48 ◼   ► So, you know, just, I don't know,

00:58:50 ◼   ► like every year I think they're gonna get closer

00:58:52 ◼   ► and every year they just put a more powerful CPU

00:58:54 ◼   ► and GPU in there or make the screen bigger

00:58:56 ◼   ► so that that sucks even more power.

00:58:58 ◼   ► It just seems like we're not really making progress on battery life.

00:59:02 ◼   ► But I have to think somewhere out there in the not-do-this-in-future, we're going to

00:59:05 ◼   ► start crossing over, like, give me one or two or three more hours, and then all this

00:59:09 ◼   ► stuff starts to fade into the background and just be applicable to people who need to be

00:59:15 ◼   ► able to play games on iOS for nine hours in a row and not lose their battery, or whatever

00:59:20 ◼   ► the hell people are doing to use those giant Mophies all day.

00:59:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:25 ◼   ► A couple of quick notes about the positives to the battery case.

00:59:30 ◼   ► One of the things that appeals to me about this is that it does have that lightning pass

00:59:33 ◼   ► through.

00:59:35 ◼   ► It sounds like there are other cases on the market that have this, like the one Marco

00:59:38 ◼   ► just impulse bought a few minutes ago.

00:59:42 ◼   ► But having this Lenmar case that I do like, but also having to carry one micro-USB port

00:59:48 ◼   ► just for that, and I pretty much have no other devices that use it, is kind of annoying.

00:59:53 ◼   ► So I like that it has lighting pass-through.

00:59:55 ◼   ► And then it also has some phantom passive antenna help,

01:00:00 ◼   ► which, I mean, if you guys have something to say about that,

01:00:02 ◼   ► we can.

01:00:03 ◼   ► But finally, the other thing that I think is appealing

01:00:05 ◼   ► is when you drop down in Notification Center

01:00:08 ◼   ► to see what your battery life is on your phone

01:00:11 ◼   ► and possibly your watch,

01:00:12 ◼   ► this will appear in Notification Center as well,

01:00:15 ◼   ► which I think is really nice

01:00:16 ◼   ► rather than having some stupid blinking lights

01:00:19 ◼   ► on the back of the thing.

01:00:20 ◼   ► Apparently there is a blinking light

01:00:22 ◼   ► the inside of the thing for when you're charging, but that's obviously not terribly useful if

01:00:25 ◼   ► the phone is in the case.

01:00:27 ◼   ► I think those are all positive.

01:00:28 ◼   ► I think that's good.

01:00:29 ◼   ► And actually, I never thought about putting your pinky there.

01:00:31 ◼   ► I've not held one of these yet, but that actually sounds really appealing too, because maybe

01:00:34 ◼   ► that can shimmy my pinky up a bit so I can actually reach the top of my already too big

01:00:39 ◼   ► phone.

01:00:40 ◼   ► That's another policy decision.

01:00:42 ◼   ► Speaking of OS integration, what are the policies—I don't have battery cases, so I don't know

01:00:46 ◼   ► what battery cases do this—but what is the policy in terms of, if you plug either a terrible

01:00:51 ◼   ► micro USB or a lightning cable or something to the bottom of your phone that's inside

01:00:55 ◼   ► a battery case.

01:00:56 ◼   ► Does it charge the battery case first?

01:00:58 ◼   ► Does it charge the phone first?

01:00:59 ◼   ► When you put a phone into a battery case, does the battery case immediately begin charging

01:01:03 ◼   ► the phone up to 100% and then stop charging when it goes that?

01:01:06 ◼   ► Or does the battery case charge the phone up to some percentage like 75 or 80 and just

01:01:10 ◼   ► try to keep it there as you use the phone?

01:01:12 ◼   ► Like how do you, how does the software in the battery case I guess decide what to do

01:01:19 ◼   ► with power?

01:01:21 ◼   ► And there is an argument to be made for the battery case not charging the phone up to

01:01:25 ◼   ► 100% and keeping it that way because keeping lithium ion batteries at 100% charge all the

01:01:29 ◼   ► time shortens their life versus keeping them at like, I think optimal is like 40% or some

01:01:33 ◼   ► crap like that.

01:01:34 ◼   ► But at any rate, keeping it charged at max all the time is not great for battery life.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Even OS X at this point like does that thing where it like lets your battery drain down

01:01:42 ◼   ► like 99, 98, 97% and then cranks you back up.

01:01:45 ◼   ► Like it's not good to keep it at 100% all the time.

01:01:48 ◼   ► I've heard that some battery cases try to keep your phone around 75 or something to

01:01:53 ◼   ► extend the battery life on it or whatever, but those type of decisions are things that

01:01:57 ◼   ► can be adjusted I guess in software or maybe in firmware.

01:02:00 ◼   ► Does the battery case have firmware?

01:02:02 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:02:03 ◼   ► Some cooperation between the device with the software on it and the battery case would

01:02:07 ◼   ► be good here.

01:02:08 ◼   ► And it's a perfect opportunity to try to do something that you couldn't do as a regular

01:02:12 ◼   ► person because as a regular person without a battery case, you have to charge 100% before

01:02:16 ◼   ► you leave the house.

01:02:17 ◼   ► charge your phone to 70% to preserve the battery life because you're just going to maybe run

01:02:20 ◼   ► out before the end of the day.

01:02:21 ◼   ► So you're always charging to 100%.

01:02:24 ◼   ► People with battery cases can maybe, I guess maybe they're frying their battery case keeping

01:02:28 ◼   ► it charged to 100%, but I'd be more comfortable doing that than the thing that's inside the

01:02:32 ◼   ► phone because it's probably still cheaper to get a new battery case than it is to replace

01:02:35 ◼   ► a battery inside the phone.

01:02:36 ◼   ► And certainly you don't have to worry about opening up your phone and doing all that other

01:02:40 ◼   ► stuff.

01:02:41 ◼   ► Well also, if there is integration between the battery case and the phone, which in Apple's

01:02:45 ◼   ► In Apple's case, there is, there's software integration

01:02:47 ◼   ► at the phone level, and no one else will be able to get that.

01:02:50 ◼   ► There's one more thing you can do that's smart

01:02:52 ◼   ► that is unfortunate that other cases can't do.

01:02:56 ◼   ► iOS has a number of changes that it does,

01:02:59 ◼   ► behaviors that it does, heuristics that it does,

01:03:01 ◼   ► when it thinks it's plugged into AC power.

01:03:03 ◼   ► It will more readily download things in the background,

01:03:06 ◼   ► it'll pull apps more often, it'll use more power

01:03:10 ◼   ► when it thinks it's plugged into AC power.

01:03:11 ◼   ► If Apple makes a case that integrates in the software,

01:03:15 ◼   ► I think a smart thing to do would be for the battery case

01:03:18 ◼   ► to communicate to the phone, hey, I'm also a battery,

01:03:21 ◼   ► this is not really AC power even though I'm charging you,

01:03:24 ◼   ► and for the phone to continue operating

01:03:26 ◼   ► as if it was running on battery power.

01:03:28 ◼   ► I don't know if Apple's case does that.

01:03:30 ◼   ► I do know that third-party cases can and don't do that.

01:03:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, it might also be neat to see

01:03:36 ◼   ► like what the policy decision is about low power mode.

01:03:39 ◼   ► I guess maybe you'd never get into low power mode

01:03:41 ◼   ► if the battery case is always charging the phone,

01:03:43 ◼   ► and if you did reach it, it would be legit turned on,

01:03:45 ◼   ► but what if you had a battery case

01:03:47 ◼   ► that was like withholding its charge from the phone

01:03:49 ◼   ► until the phone dipped to a certain level

01:03:50 ◼   ► and then it triggered the low power warning?

01:03:51 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:03:52 ◼   ► This is yet another reason why actually increasing

01:03:56 ◼   ► the capacity of the battery inside the phone

01:03:58 ◼   ► removes all these complexities.

01:03:59 ◼   ► You don't have to make all these weird policy decisions

01:04:01 ◼   ► about how you share the battery and all that other stuff,

01:04:03 ◼   ► but bottom line is, official support

01:04:05 ◼   ► for everything we just discussed is a good idea

01:04:07 ◼   ► because no matter how big you make the battery in the phone,

01:04:09 ◼   ► someone's always gonna need something

01:04:10 ◼   ► that's the size of a bar of ivory soap

01:04:12 ◼   ► and there's gonna be battery cases exist.

01:04:14 ◼   ► And if battery cases are going to exist,

01:04:16 ◼   ► the OS should really have support for them.

01:04:17 ◼   ► Like there should be a made for iPhone program

01:04:20 ◼   ► to be compliant battery case,

01:04:21 ◼   ► to get all the features we just described,

01:04:23 ◼   ► even if Apple's the first one to do them.

01:04:25 ◼   ► Like why withhold that?

01:04:26 ◼   ► I was surprised to learn that I read the same thing

01:04:29 ◼   ► that like that as far as iPhones are concerned,

01:04:31 ◼   ► they think they're attached to AC power

01:04:33 ◼   ► when attached to a battery case.

01:04:34 ◼   ► 'Cause battery cases have been around for a really long time

01:04:36 ◼   ► and you would think by now Apple would have

01:04:38 ◼   ► official support for,

01:04:39 ◼   ► "Hey, if you're making a battery case,

01:04:41 ◼   ► "do this and that and have these resistances on these pins

01:04:44 ◼   ► "and will let us know that you are a battery case

01:04:46 ◼   ► "and will treat you the right way."

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01:06:45 ◼   ► - One more bit on the smart battery case.

01:06:48 ◼   ► There was a story in The Verge about

01:06:50 ◼   ► does Apple's smart battery case look weird

01:06:53 ◼   ► because Mophie has a ton of patents on battery cases?

01:06:56 ◼   ► Well, Mophie does have a ton of patents on battery cases,

01:06:58 ◼   ► some of them involving a two-part case

01:07:00 ◼   ► which snaps over the thing and just, you know,

01:07:03 ◼   ► tons of dumb patents.

01:07:05 ◼   ► Is that why Apple's case looks like this?

01:07:08 ◼   ► Apple says no.

01:07:09 ◼   ► In their strange communication with the tech press

01:07:12 ◼   ► that they are doing nowadays,

01:07:14 ◼   ► they apparently have said through channels unequivocally no.

01:07:18 ◼   ► - That's not entirely surprising

01:07:21 ◼   ► since this Lenmar case that I have

01:07:23 ◼   ► operates the exact same way

01:07:24 ◼   ► that the supposed MOFI patents would prohibit.

01:07:29 ◼   ► But to be fair, Lenmar is a much smaller target

01:07:32 ◼   ► than Apple would be, so I'm not sure anyone cares.

01:07:35 ◼   ► - I think Apple, like, the reason I believe this story

01:07:40 ◼   ► that Apple says that they didn't make the case

01:07:42 ◼   ► they waited because of patents is not because I think Apple,

01:07:46 ◼   ► you know, Apple could have made the case

01:07:48 ◼   ► and not infringed on Apple.

01:07:49 ◼   ► I think if Apple made a case that infringed

01:07:51 ◼   ► on Moby's Fafs, Apple wouldn't care

01:07:52 ◼   ► because they've got a bazillion dollars and Moby doesn't.

01:07:55 ◼   ► Like, if it seemed like Apple's about to lose the case,

01:07:58 ◼   ► they would just buy Moby.

01:07:59 ◼   ► I mean, seriously, giant companies like Apple are not afraid of small companies like Mophie

01:08:05 ◼   ► when it comes to infringing patents because they could just tie them up in litigation

01:08:08 ◼   ► until the company goes out of business.

01:08:09 ◼   ► Not that they're like willfully infringing patents, but as I've said many times, everything

01:08:13 ◼   ► is patented.

01:08:14 ◼   ► There's tons of dumb patents.

01:08:15 ◼   ► There's nothing you can do in the technology sector that is not violating someone's patents.

01:08:19 ◼   ► So every single thing Apple does is violating somebody's patents, and that's true of every

01:08:22 ◼   ► technology company.

01:08:23 ◼   ► It's just the cost, the stupid cost of doing business.

01:08:26 ◼   ► And so Apple is not going to have some sort of meeting before designing their iPhone battery

01:08:31 ◼   ► case and say, "Let's take a survey of all the patents that are held by people who have

01:08:34 ◼   ► patents on iPhone battery cases and make sure whatever we do doesn't come close to one of

01:08:38 ◼   ► those, they're just going to make the case that they want to make."

01:08:42 ◼   ► If they didn't, they would be paralyzed.

01:08:43 ◼   ► Like it's like, "We're adding a feature to iOS.

01:08:45 ◼   ► Please spend six months trying to search for every super dumb patent that applies to what

01:08:49 ◼   ► we're planning."

01:08:50 ◼   ► They're just going to do it.

01:08:51 ◼   ► They're just going to do it and they're going to wait for somebody to sue them because that's

01:08:53 ◼   ► That's the way business works in this stupid world that we have here in the United States.

01:08:57 ◼   ► All right, anything else on the case?

01:08:59 ◼   ► I can't believe we talked for so long about a battery case.

01:09:02 ◼   ► Have you met us?

01:09:03 ◼   ► Of course we did.

01:09:04 ◼   ► By the way, did anyone order this?

01:09:06 ◼   ► I mean, you'll have six.

01:09:07 ◼   ► No, no.

01:09:08 ◼   ► Well, actually, I only have a six.

01:09:09 ◼   ► I assume it fits a six, right?

01:09:11 ◼   ► It does.

01:09:12 ◼   ► Yes, it does.

01:09:13 ◼   ► It doesn't fit the pluses, but it does fit the regulars.

01:09:15 ◼   ► No, I mean, I can see why people would choose this one.

01:09:18 ◼   ► You know, it does have some integration.

01:09:21 ◼   ► It does feel probably pretty good if you want a rubberized silicone case feel for grip purposes.

01:09:27 ◼   ► It is probably good for that, although I don't know whether the bulge in the back would be

01:09:32 ◼   ► more comfortable, less comfortable.

01:09:34 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:09:35 ◼   ► But I see why people would choose this one.

01:09:38 ◼   ► But I think anybody who...

01:09:40 ◼   ► This sounds so stupid.

01:09:41 ◼   ► Anybody who really cares about their battery case, I think would find many better options.

01:09:48 ◼   ► - It depends on what you care about.

01:09:50 ◼   ► may look rugged to some people. I'm not sure how the aesthetics will be received by people

01:09:57 ◼   ► who are not as obsessed with the Apple aesthetic as we are and perhaps the people listening

01:10:02 ◼   ► to this podcast are. Because Apple's design is a particular aesthetic and it appeals to

01:10:07 ◼   ► us obviously because we like Apple products and we buy them and stuff, but it's not necessarily

01:10:10 ◼   ► appealing to everybody. It's kind of like the Aston Martin aesthetic versus the Corvette

01:10:16 ◼   ► versus Ferrari, just historically speaking. Those are three very different styles and

01:10:20 ◼   ► And some people really like Aston Martin and think Corvettes are ugly, and some people

01:10:23 ◼   ► really like Corvettes and Mustangs and think Aston Martins don't appeal to them.

01:10:27 ◼   ► And the same thing with Ferrari.

01:10:29 ◼   ► Not every style appeals to every person.

01:10:32 ◼   ► And when I look at the style, I try to say, "Is this a style that would appeal to somebody?"

01:10:36 ◼   ► And what I think of is like power tools, you know?

01:10:39 ◼   ► Or maybe a combination of L.L. Bean and Dewalt power tools or something.

01:10:44 ◼   ► Like there is a sort of rugged, rubbery, grommety kind of aesthetic here that might actually

01:10:51 ◼   ► be appealing to some people and maybe there's more of them than there are the people who

01:10:55 ◼   ► want everything.

01:10:56 ◼   ► I would say apples in car manufacturer analogy is closest to like Aston Martin, but people

01:10:59 ◼   ► do like Corvettes and Mustangs and they have bulges and flares and nostrils and all sorts

01:11:03 ◼   ► of weird, rude things.

01:11:06 ◼   ► So I'm not entirely sure if this is actually, even though it is so different than the aesthetic

01:11:12 ◼   ► that we like from Apple, is it really unappealing to everybody? I mean, at the very least, your

01:11:17 ◼   ► phone will sit flat on the table.

01:11:18 ◼   ► - Oh, God. First of all, I think if Dewalt designed a battery case, they might have,

01:11:23 ◼   ► I don't even know, but if they did, it would be way better looking than this. Secondly,

01:11:28 ◼   ► I would far rather have a Corvette than this, and even though I don't like the way Corvettes

01:11:32 ◼   ► look, usually.

01:11:32 ◼   ► - Have you seen the back of the current one? I don't know.

01:11:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's pretty rough, but have you seen this? I mean, have you seen the battery case?

01:11:39 ◼   ► I have to say it's growing on me.

01:11:40 ◼   ► It's growing on me.

01:11:41 ◼   ► This one, I look at the back of this now, I start thinking it looks like the interior

01:11:46 ◼   ► of a space station set from a 1970s movie.

01:11:49 ◼   ► Wow, wow.

01:11:50 ◼   ► Like, take a bunch of these.

01:11:51 ◼   ► If you could do this in miniature, like, take a bunch of these, erase the Apple logo and

01:11:54 ◼   ► line them up to make like a hallway.

01:11:56 ◼   ► Like these are the walls of the hallway.

01:11:57 ◼   ► Oh my god.

01:11:58 ◼   ► I can see that.

01:11:59 ◼   ► That is from a sci-fi movie.

01:12:01 ◼   ► They're like little bulging around.

01:12:02 ◼   ► But what I've heard from, I think this was in the Mashable article, like, don't get the

01:12:06 ◼   ► white one, people.

01:12:07 ◼   ► I know, you know, we've already talked to Casey about this, but like white looks good

01:12:11 ◼   ► in some things, but for something you're going to hold, it's going to get dirty and gross

01:12:15 ◼   ► really fast.

01:12:16 ◼   ► Like there's no avoiding it.

01:12:17 ◼   ► We handle our phones all the time.

01:12:19 ◼   ► We put them in pockets.

01:12:20 ◼   ► We put them in purses.

01:12:21 ◼   ► We put them down on tables.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Do not get the white one unless you're okay with the fact that it's going to not look

01:12:26 ◼   ► like Apple's product shots for more than like a week.

01:12:29 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Was it Christina's who said like it was discoloring after like one day?

01:12:33 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:34 ◼   ► I mean, how can it not?

01:12:35 ◼   ► It is magical, bright white, you know, Johnny Ives white world white.

01:12:39 ◼   ► Nothing will stay – if you touch it, nothing will stay that color, sorry.

01:12:43 ◼   ► Even like porcelain, even if it was made of fine china, I feel like it would eventually

01:12:47 ◼   ► get ugly.

01:12:48 ◼   ► But this is silicone.

01:12:49 ◼   ► It will not stay that color.

01:12:50 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:12:51 ◼   ► What else do we have to talk about?

01:12:53 ◼   ► We had a lot of updates.

01:12:54 ◼   ► All the things got updated.

01:12:55 ◼   ► Do we care?

01:12:56 ◼   ► Well, we could enumerate them and see if we have anything to say about them.

01:13:00 ◼   ► We got iOS 9.2.

01:13:01 ◼   ► Is there anything noteworthy there?

01:13:03 ◼   ► I updated my devices and did not notice anything and didn't recall seeing anything significant

01:13:07 ◼   ► in the change notes.

01:13:08 ◼   ► Uh, weren't you, was it you that was very upset about the done button in Safari View

01:13:13 ◼   ► Controller?

01:13:14 ◼   ► Uh, not upset.

01:13:15 ◼   ► Like, they keep moving stuff around.

01:13:17 ◼   ► Like, I don't know if it's better or worse than the other place.

01:13:21 ◼   ► It still hasn't fixed the actual thing that drives me nuts about Safari View Controllers

01:13:25 ◼   ► is as soon as you scroll it scrunches up and hides and then you have to do something else

01:13:29 ◼   ► to make it appear again before you can dismiss it.

01:13:31 ◼   ► That is the maddening thing.

01:13:32 ◼   ► care where the button is because the argument can be made either side it's like depends on what hand

01:13:36 ◼   ► you're holding the thing with or whatever like there is no right position for the done button

01:13:40 ◼   ► and maybe like i was thinking why did they move it maybe they were like well that's like where the

01:13:44 ◼   ► back button is like on the left side and even though this isn't a right to left navigation the

01:13:49 ◼   ► thing that makes it go away should be on the left and not the right i don't know what the thing was

01:13:53 ◼   ► but the bottom line is that it still disappears as soon as you start scrolling a web page and that

01:13:58 ◼   ► That is the real criminal act of iOS 8 and 9,

01:14:01 ◼   ► and not the position of the done button.

01:14:04 ◼   ► But yeah, that's the only thing I've noticed so far.

01:14:06 ◼   ► - I mean, I've heard from a couple Apple people

01:14:09 ◼   ► here and there that these were all

01:14:10 ◼   ► pretty substantial bug fix updates.

01:14:13 ◼   ► And that's good to hear, you know?

01:14:14 ◼   ► I kind of like when there's a significant update

01:14:18 ◼   ► that appears to contain nothing new, basically,

01:14:22 ◼   ► because that usually means a lot of bug fixes.

01:14:25 ◼   ► - I would have liked to see that in the change notes, though.

01:14:26 ◼   ► Like, that's what I was looking for.

01:14:27 ◼   ► "Yeah, show me all the bugs,"

01:14:29 ◼   ► but they didn't show anything.

01:14:30 ◼   ► - No, it improves performance and stability.

01:14:32 ◼   ► I mean, they're not gonna tell you,

01:14:34 ◼   ► here's 500 bugs that we fixed in these releases

01:14:38 ◼   ► because they're not gonna make themselves look bad.

01:14:40 ◼   ► - They do say some things, like they fixed,

01:14:44 ◼   ► I forget what changed on this, but like,

01:14:45 ◼   ► fixed the bugs that could cause whatever

01:14:47 ◼   ► and whatever application, something really obscure.

01:14:48 ◼   ► It's like, if you're gonna list that,

01:14:50 ◼   ► are you not listing the other things

01:14:52 ◼   ► that are equal in obscurity?

01:14:54 ◼   ► I don't quite understand the political machine

01:14:58 ◼   ► that determines what makes things be in release notes.

01:15:01 ◼   ► 'Cause I do see stuff that sometimes,

01:15:02 ◼   ► it's not just like performance enhanced bug fixes,

01:15:04 ◼   ► there's like some very specific things in there

01:15:06 ◼   ► which makes me think, is there nothing else

01:15:08 ◼   ► of that same specificity as this release?

01:15:10 ◼   ► Surely there is, I don't know.

01:15:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, I think it's very PR massaged to be,

01:15:17 ◼   ► first of all, very passive, like,

01:15:20 ◼   ► fixes an issue in which certain people were affected

01:15:24 ◼   ► by a certain weird behavior.

01:15:28 ◼   ► They used worrying and freezing to be just very passive,

01:15:31 ◼   ► very like, this just kind of happened to us.

01:15:35 ◼   ► Yeah, it's PR, it's all PR.

01:15:40 ◼   ► - All right, yeah, I would agree, John,

01:15:41 ◼   ► I didn't notice anything, I've updated my iPad

01:15:43 ◼   ► and my iPhone, and Aaron's iPhone, updated my watch,

01:15:47 ◼   ► haven't noticed anything there.

01:15:49 ◼   ► So yeah.

01:15:50 ◼   ► - We got the OS X 10.11.2 update,

01:15:53 ◼   ► which those release notes also,

01:15:54 ◼   ► like they were like, "Hey, we added some fix

01:15:57 ◼   ► "for some bug in mail or something,

01:15:59 ◼   ► "but I saw you, Marco, asking on Twitter and to The Void,

01:16:02 ◼   ► "did they fix like USB audio fix,

01:16:05 ◼   ► "USB stack specifically related to audio?"

01:16:09 ◼   ► And you got, did you get any answers about that?

01:16:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, Tipster said that it,

01:16:13 ◼   ► 'cause like there are a lot of problems in El Cap so far

01:16:16 ◼   ► regarding the USB stack and as it relates to audio devices.

01:16:20 ◼   ► Where a lot of times, and I've talked to a few other people,

01:16:22 ◼   ► I know this happens to them too, it isn't just me,

01:16:25 ◼   ► where a lot of times I will have my audio device

01:16:28 ◼   ► that I'm like playing music through or whatever,

01:16:30 ◼   ► just stop working completely.

01:16:32 ◼   ► Just like music just stops playing.

01:16:34 ◼   ► If you hit play in iTunes, the time doesn't even advance.

01:16:37 ◼   ► Like it's not even getting to the point

01:16:38 ◼   ► of sending the buffer out.

01:16:40 ◼   ► And then you try to select different sound output devices

01:16:42 ◼   ► and like it fails or you can't select one

01:16:45 ◼   ► or just disappears for a while.

01:16:47 ◼   ► And oftentimes it's fixed by just waiting like 10 minutes.

01:16:51 ◼   ► Oftentimes it's fixed by rebooting.

01:16:53 ◼   ► Very, very strange.

01:16:54 ◼   ► Apparently the USB stack had a lot of changes done in LCAP.

01:16:59 ◼   ► And so I've heard from various people,

01:17:01 ◼   ► including ATP Tipster,

01:17:03 ◼   ► that that has been now fixed in the .2 release.

01:17:06 ◼   ► So I'm excited to try it out.

01:17:08 ◼   ► I haven't actually installed it yet,

01:17:09 ◼   ► but I'm gonna install it after the show.

01:17:11 ◼   ► - Do you have these problems only on your computer,

01:17:13 ◼   ► which is festooned with German audio equipment

01:17:16 ◼   ► and USB things.

01:17:17 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:17:18 ◼   ► I'm wondering if it's like,

01:17:20 ◼   ► because you are exercising both the USB subsystem

01:17:23 ◼   ► and the audio component of that more than I am,

01:17:26 ◼   ► but I've had zero USB problems,

01:17:27 ◼   ► but I also do almost zero things involving USB.

01:17:30 ◼   ► All I do is like a couple times a week,

01:17:31 ◼   ► I plug in my USB mic to this one Mac and that's it.

01:17:34 ◼   ► Everything else is not,

01:17:36 ◼   ► I'm not unplugging and plugging things.

01:17:37 ◼   ► I don't have any other USB audio gear except for this mic

01:17:40 ◼   ► and I've had no problems.

01:17:41 ◼   ► I'm wondering if it's because you feel like you're actually using the USB stack in a much

01:17:48 ◼   ► more thorough way than I am that you're running into these problems.

01:17:51 ◼   ► And I guess your control group would be like Tiff's computer if she's not messing with

01:17:54 ◼   ► – maybe she is, maybe you've got all those mics hooked up to her computer too.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Can you tell if it's because you are actually doing USB and audio stuff that's causing

01:18:03 ◼   ► this?

01:18:04 ◼   ► The problem is the bugs aren't easily reproducible.

01:18:06 ◼   ► It just kind of happens out of nowhere maybe once a week or every few days.

01:18:11 ◼   ► So there's never any one thing that seems to trigger it, so I have no idea.

01:18:15 ◼   ► But hopefully it's fixed and I'm looking forward to seeing if it is fixed.

01:18:22 ◼   ► Other than that, LCAP has been very good for me.

01:18:24 ◼   ► It has not had any other real problems to speak of, but that's been a pretty annoying

01:18:29 ◼   ► one.

01:18:30 ◼   ► I think I've seen more people, like every once in a while someone will come across my

01:18:33 ◼   ► Twitter stream or something I'm blogging around like, "Apple should do a snow leopard release

01:18:37 ◼   ► where they just fix things or whatever."

01:18:39 ◼   ► like, didn't they just do that?

01:18:41 ◼   ► Like 10.11 is very, as we talked about, very snow leopardy where they didn't spend a lot

01:18:47 ◼   ► of time on big new features, they tried to do bug fixes, Discovery D kind of messed that

01:18:52 ◼   ► up a little bit, but here we are at 10.11.2, not too long after 10.11, by the time the

01:18:58 ◼   ► point two release comes to have dealt with the Discovery D, which was granted, which

01:19:02 ◼   ► was a hangover from Yosemite, see that one's like, oh they didn't fix that one very quickly,

01:19:06 ◼   ► it took a long time for them to fix it.

01:19:08 ◼   ► But anyway, by the time 1011.2 comes down, if we're kind of saying that the major problems

01:19:13 ◼   ► that were in 1011.0 perhaps seem to have been addressed, that's a reasonable timeline for

01:19:20 ◼   ► OS X releases.

01:19:21 ◼   ► By the .2, .3, or .4, most of the stuff should be shaken out.

01:19:25 ◼   ► And the .4 is like back in the day when it was 18 months or two years between releases.

01:19:29 ◼   ► But if it turns out that 1011.2 got the really big issues, aside from all the other stuff

01:19:36 ◼   ► which really has more to do with the server and the architecture and they can't actually fix by updating the OS which is sad but

01:19:42 ◼   ► Anyway, aside from that if they really have shaken everything out that I feel like that is fully on a snow leopardy

01:19:49 ◼   ► Type schedule people forget the snow leopard had some weird ass stuff in 10 6 0 as well

01:19:54 ◼   ► Like every release does so I'm I've been very happy with el cap so far. I upgraded everything on the day

01:20:00 ◼   ► It was released. I immediately apply all the point updates. I haven't regretted it. I have experienced no weirdness anywhere

01:20:06 ◼   ► again, other than iCloud stuff, which I really,

01:20:09 ◼   ► like anything that involves servers,

01:20:11 ◼   ► I don't blame the OS entirely for that.

01:20:13 ◼   ► - And really, I mean honestly, like in,

01:20:16 ◼   ► for a while the Mac kind of felt neglected,

01:20:19 ◼   ► because iOS was taking all the glory,

01:20:21 ◼   ► and all the time, and all the new stuff.

01:20:23 ◼   ► And then Apple started doing these like massive changes

01:20:25 ◼   ► to the Mac, trying to make it more like iOS,

01:20:27 ◼   ► like in the Lion era, and forward from that,

01:20:31 ◼   ► and it just started getting really weird, and really bad.

01:20:35 ◼   ► And then you had, I think Yosemite was kind of the peak

01:20:38 ◼   ► of Apple not only having mediocre ideas

01:20:43 ◼   ► on a lot of the Mac stuff, but also starting

01:20:45 ◼   ► to have really bad execution of a lot of it,

01:20:47 ◼   ► where it was just so buggy and so many problems.

01:20:50 ◼   ► - Leopard and Lion both had bad implementations

01:20:54 ◼   ► of everything too.

01:20:55 ◼   ► - That's true, fair enough, okay.

01:20:56 ◼   ► - Maybe it was just the odd releases.

01:20:57 ◼   ► - Maybe. (laughs)

01:20:58 ◼   ► But I feel like now we're getting to the point

01:21:01 ◼   ► where the neglect in favor of working on iOS

01:21:06 ◼   ► is actually helping the Mac most of the time

01:21:10 ◼   ► because now it's like you can leave us alone

01:21:13 ◼   ► and stop touching things and let us do our work

01:21:16 ◼   ► on this pretty stable platform

01:21:19 ◼   ► and you can go have your fun on iOS.

01:21:21 ◼   ► And the only thing we have to watch out for

01:21:24 ◼   ► is when they do one of these drive-by rewrites,

01:21:28 ◼   ► Discovery D was one, this USB subsystem in LCAP

01:21:31 ◼   ► seems to have been one, certainly the disk utility

01:21:34 ◼   ► in LCAP is one, they kind of do these drive-by rewrites

01:21:37 ◼   ► where they, for some reason, they decide something

01:21:40 ◼   ► needs to be dramatically rewritten or refactored

01:21:43 ◼   ► or redesigned or whatever, and they do an 80% job of it,

01:21:46 ◼   ► and then they just move on to other things,

01:21:48 ◼   ► and it leaves this subsystem broken for a while.

01:21:52 ◼   ► As long as we can minimize those times where that happens,

01:21:56 ◼   ► and they're leaving us mostly alone on the Mac,

01:21:59 ◼   ► I'm okay with that.

01:22:00 ◼   ► 'Cause this is where we get our work done.

01:22:03 ◼   ► 'Cause, well, those of us who aren't using iPad Pros.

01:22:05 ◼   ► But this is where we get our work done.

01:22:07 ◼   ► Please don't mess it up, please.

01:22:09 ◼   ► Just leave us alone, let it keep working.

01:22:12 ◼   ► Please stop updating it every year,

01:22:14 ◼   ► and please stop trying to do major,

01:22:16 ◼   ► like, massive shifts on it.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Just please.

01:22:19 ◼   ► - Well, like I said, they're not doing those

01:22:21 ◼   ► major rewrites for their health.

01:22:22 ◼   ► Like, they're doing them for a reason.

01:22:23 ◼   ► And the only difference is they just have to actually execute well on them.

01:22:27 ◼   ► Like I, two examples, I gave LaunchD as an example in the past of like,

01:22:31 ◼   ► why the hell are you replacing a NIT?

01:22:33 ◼   ► It's perfectly fine.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Like every Unix uses it.

01:22:35 ◼   ► Why do you think you have to have your own thing?

01:22:36 ◼   ► It's like second system syndrome, you screen it, but LaunchD is awesome.

01:22:39 ◼   ► Right.

01:22:40 ◼   ► And LaunchD was buggy at first too, but they did it.

01:22:42 ◼   ► And they did it because the existing thing that filled that role didn't

01:22:46 ◼   ► have the features they needed.

01:22:47 ◼   ► LaunchD does.

01:22:48 ◼   ► They, they executed it well enough that they didn't have to roll it back.

01:22:51 ◼   ► I know that's a low bar, but they did it well enough.

01:22:53 ◼   ► they didn't have to roll it back.

01:22:54 ◼   ► Most people didn't even notice it,

01:22:56 ◼   ► except for the fact that I wrote about it

01:22:58 ◼   ► in one of my old OS X reviews,

01:22:59 ◼   ► and they were like, "Oh, LaunchD, what's that?"

01:23:00 ◼   ► But I can tell you that the original version of LaunchD

01:23:02 ◼   ► had tons of bugs, but they got it done well enough,

01:23:06 ◼   ► and they moved forward.

01:23:07 ◼   ► Another example is IconServices,

01:23:09 ◼   ► which has had bugs, I don't know,

01:23:11 ◼   ► for how many freaking years?

01:23:12 ◼   ► Like, they're mostly cosmetic,

01:23:15 ◼   ► and maybe that's why they didn't get fixed,

01:23:16 ◼   ► but IconServices would corrupt its caches in some weird way,

01:23:19 ◼   ► and all your doc icons would show up all crazy

01:23:21 ◼   ► and pixelated for just years and years and years,

01:23:23 ◼   ► And it's like, obviously this isn't a quick bug fix.

01:23:25 ◼   ► Obviously there is something architecturally wrong

01:23:27 ◼   ► with icon services and someone needs to go in there

01:23:30 ◼   ► with a big wire brush and say, all right,

01:23:32 ◼   ► what the hell is going on icon services?

01:23:34 ◼   ► Let me deal with this, let me fix it.

01:23:36 ◼   ► And that took so many years to happen.

01:23:38 ◼   ► And honestly, I wish they had tackled that sooner.

01:23:40 ◼   ► Sometimes you have a subsystem,

01:23:42 ◼   ► they need it because it's super old and crusty

01:23:43 ◼   ► and it's not even yours.

01:23:44 ◼   ► And maybe it's like BSD code leftover from God knows when,

01:23:47 ◼   ► or because the first guy took a pass at it,

01:23:48 ◼   ► did a crappy job and you know,

01:23:50 ◼   ► you wanna take another, a second run at it

01:23:52 ◼   ► and do a better job.

01:23:53 ◼   ► That's what you have to do.

01:23:54 ◼   ► That's the job of basically the CoreOS group.

01:23:56 ◼   ► I want them to continue doing that.

01:23:57 ◼   ► I just want them to do a better job.

01:24:00 ◼   ► And I think they do a good job almost all the time.

01:24:02 ◼   ► And a lot of my old OS X reviews,

01:24:03 ◼   ► I've applauded the CoreOS group as a great example

01:24:06 ◼   ► of, "See guys, CoreOS is rewriting major components

01:24:09 ◼   ► and doing a good job and improving things

01:24:10 ◼   ► and fixing their bugs and year over year

01:24:12 ◼   ► making things better and adding features.

01:24:14 ◼   ► Why doesn't everybody else like say on the GUI team

01:24:16 ◼   ► or whatever do that?"

01:24:18 ◼   ► And the answer is like they have other stakeholders

01:24:20 ◼   ► let's say like people who care about aesthetics

01:24:23 ◼   ► and marketing and branding, whereas people doing LaunchD

01:24:25 ◼   ► have nobody worrying about aesthetics or branding

01:24:28 ◼   ► or anything like that.

01:24:29 ◼   ► But anyway, I'm totally in favor of them continuing

01:24:32 ◼   ► to look at their OS, decide which subsystems are really

01:24:38 ◼   ► due for either a really thorough spring cleaning

01:24:40 ◼   ► or maybe a complete replacement with something new.

01:24:43 ◼   ► You just have to do it well enough

01:24:44 ◼   ► that you don't have to roll it back when Vint Cerf complains

01:24:47 ◼   ► about it six months later.

01:24:50 ◼   ► I feel like that's a low bar.

01:24:52 ◼   ► But that isn't a given though.

01:24:54 ◼   ► I think modern Apple with this incredibly relentless annual release schedule of everything,

01:25:02 ◼   ► all these different product lines that keep expanding into even more product lines and

01:25:05 ◼   ► having the engineering resources spread incredibly thin and constantly moving around between

01:25:10 ◼   ► things, I feel like what we keep seeing from Apple is that they don't seem to be incredibly

01:25:18 ◼   ► good anymore at doing these big rewrites of subsystems or big new initiatives. Their record

01:25:24 ◼   ► is pretty bad.

01:25:25 ◼   ► What have they screwed up besides DiscoveryD?

01:25:28 ◼   ► Apple Music is a big one.

01:25:30 ◼   ► Like the USB one I would say is a success, especially at this point too. If you have

01:25:35 ◼   ► a big refactoring and a big change to a major subsystem and you get all the kinks worked

01:25:40 ◼   ► out of it by point two, that's probably pretty much all you can hope for. That's a pretty

01:25:45 ◼   ► good job. I still have faith in those groups to be able to do this. And the yearly schedule,

01:25:51 ◼   ► you can debate about that, but really, if they're competent, and I think they mostly

01:25:55 ◼   ► are, all yearly schedule does is push features that take more than one release out farther.

01:26:01 ◼   ► Because every release has a certain amount of overhead associated with it. And the more

01:26:04 ◼   ► releases you have, it's like, say you want to do a feature, and it's like, I know this

01:26:07 ◼   ► feature is too big to fit into one release. I'm not going to say file system, but you

01:26:10 ◼   ► know, you can think of something else. I know this feature is too big to fit into one release.

01:26:15 ◼   ► How do I do this project at Apple?

01:26:17 ◼   ► And Apple would say, you can do that project just fine.

01:26:20 ◼   ► You just have to be on a multi-year plan.

01:26:22 ◼   ► If your thing takes a year and a half,

01:26:23 ◼   ► we're not going to cut a release in a year and a half for you.

01:26:25 ◼   ► You're just going to be on the two-year one.

01:26:27 ◼   ► So there's the overhead of each release that adds to just--

01:26:30 ◼   ► it's just overhead.

01:26:30 ◼   ► It just adds to the work that everybody has to do.

01:26:34 ◼   ► And then your schedules just get pushed out.

01:26:36 ◼   ► Really, yearly releases is simply

01:26:38 ◼   ► a matter of good management of software organization.

01:26:42 ◼   ► What's above the line?

01:26:43 ◼   ► What's below the line?

01:26:44 ◼   ► What fits in this release?

01:26:45 ◼   ► What doesn't?

01:26:46 ◼   ► And if you do a good job about keeping things in and booting them out, I mean, you could

01:26:49 ◼   ► even say Discovery D was the problem of that.

01:26:51 ◼   ► Not as if they did a bad job on Discovery D, but during the meetings when they say what's

01:26:54 ◼   ► in and what's out for 10.10, someone should have said, "We really wanted to do Discovery

01:27:00 ◼   ► D in this one, but it's not up to snuff yet.

01:27:02 ◼   ► Boot it to 10.11.

01:27:03 ◼   ► Boot it to 10.12."

01:27:04 ◼   ► You just keep kicking it down the road.

01:27:06 ◼   ► That is the exercise.

01:27:07 ◼   ► You could have, until you get down to a certain point where the overhead dwarfs the amount

01:27:10 ◼   ► of dev time you have, you could have six-month releases if you wanted.

01:27:13 ◼   ► It's all just a matter of how you draw the line for project management parlance, what's

01:27:18 ◼   ► in and what's out for this release, what's ready to go and what's not ready to go.

01:27:22 ◼   ► So I think having an organization that is disciplined in that way, and I think, I don't

01:27:27 ◼   ► know if you can contribute to Craig Federighi or whoever, they went from the sort of loosey-goosey,

01:27:32 ◼   ► artistic, "We'll release the OS when it's ready," Steve Jobs kind of "Let's figure it

01:27:37 ◼   ► out" type of thing, to a much more regimented, "We're going to put ourselves on a yearly

01:27:42 ◼   ► We're gonna be disciplined about it. That is that is much more sort of

01:27:46 ◼   ► You know a business 101

01:27:49 ◼   ► Like we should be able to do this. We if we are an efficient good organization

01:27:53 ◼   ► It shouldn't be like well, I don't really know when the next OS is coming out

01:27:56 ◼   ► It's whenever it's done and you know

01:27:57 ◼   ► Well, the iPhone is taking some time away so leopards gonna be a little later

01:28:01 ◼   ► It's like no we didn't release every year and if your stuff doesn't make it

01:28:03 ◼   ► It doesn't make it but you know, the train is leaving the station with or without you

01:28:06 ◼   ► I think doing that inside Apple was a really good decision

01:28:10 ◼   ► They're just working on like what needs to fit in it and not fit in those releases

01:28:15 ◼   ► Alright, what else got updated?

01:28:18 ◼   ► WatchOS got updated. Big news!

01:28:20 ◼   ► Actually that is sort of big news

01:28:22 ◼   ► Real time follow-up for myself. I didn't notice any WatchOS updates except I went to kick off the workflow

01:28:30 ◼   ► I have to tell Aaron I'm on my way home

01:28:33 ◼   ► So this is using the workflow app and it will

01:28:36 ◼   ► figure out the driving time from where I am to the house and then queue up a text message

01:28:40 ◼   ► for Aaron saying I'll be home in like 15 minutes or whatever.

01:28:44 ◼   ► It used to be on the watch that I would kick off that workflow and then I would have to

01:28:49 ◼   ► do handoff to actually send the text message, but now I can run that workflow and it is

01:28:54 ◼   ► capable of sending the text message from the watch, which is super exciting.

01:28:59 ◼   ► I know you're both really happy that that has changed.

01:29:02 ◼   ► Eric Meyer Why do the watch updates take so long?

01:29:04 ◼   ► That's my question.

01:29:05 ◼   ► It's such a small device, it has such a little story.

01:29:07 ◼   ► What is it doing?

01:29:08 ◼   ► - Honestly, I think it's because the watch

01:29:10 ◼   ► is just really slow.

01:29:12 ◼   ► I mean, CPU-wise, it seems to be roughly on the level

01:29:15 ◼   ► of an iPhone 3GS, and if you look at Geekbench iOS benchmarks

01:29:20 ◼   ► by Geekbench standards, the iPhone 3GS is about 16 times

01:29:26 ◼   ► slower than an iPhone 6S, so if you think about

01:29:30 ◼   ► the kind of thing it's doing, it's running on a processor

01:29:35 ◼   ► that's 16 times slower than what we're accustomed to.

01:29:37 ◼   ► Now granted, it's a simpler OS,

01:29:40 ◼   ► I'm sure the patching process is simpler, et cetera,

01:29:42 ◼   ► but keep that in mind as the baseline of like,

01:29:45 ◼   ► everything that it does that has to patch with that CPU

01:29:48 ◼   ► is going through something 16 times slower